The Long Slow Lizarding of Hermione Granger
by mp3.1415player
Summary: This side story started life as a series of Omakes in my Worm/Luna Varga crossover story "Taylor Varga." It's more or less outgrown that now, with enough words involved to make it viable as a (sort of) standalone story as an experiment. However, it most likely won't make sense unless you have a working knowledge of that story AND Harry Potter, so I'd suggest reading both first :)
1. Flaming Cup

_This started life as a series of Omakes in the main Taylor Varga story line. It's more or less outgrown that now, with enough words involved to make it viable as a (sort of) standalone story. **However**... It still requires knowledge of the Taylor Varga background to really understand where its coming from and/or going, so if you've never read any of that, you may find it somewhat confusing. I'd recommend quickly catching up on the main story first, it's only around 1.6 million words or so. Shouldn't take long :)_

 _A working knowledge of the Harry Potter universe is probably helpful too, but if you know nothing about either of the sources for this, you should probably find something else to read. Unless you really like being utterly befuddled, of course! If that's the case, carry on..._

 _The first four chapters are the Omakes currently published here at the point I moved it out to its own file, complete with original notes. From there on, there is new content, which won't be put in the main story from this point. It's not the most ideal method to deal with the entire situation, but considering some of the slightly weird and occasionally aggressive comments I've had about people not liking the previous method, it's worth a try. I fully expect I will get more or less the same sort of thing happening here too, in the other direction! It's a no win scenario, writing. But I do what I can ;)_

 _The Omakes in the main story will be replaced with links to this story. If it works out all right, I may do the same with the other Omake series I've ended up writing, but I'm in no rush at the moment to do so._

 _Enjoy!_

* * *

 _I can't help it, these things keep coming to me and wanting to be written. Who am I to deny them?_

* * *

"The Goblet of Fi..." the ancient wizard got as far as saying, when he was interrupted by the main doors to the Great Hall creaking open. All the people who were looking in that direction, mainly the professors, stared in visible shock, as did the man himself, his mouth still open but the last part of the word hissing into silence.

"Hey, I found it!" a deep female voice said, sounding pleased. No one recognized it, or the slight accent it had. "In here. Hurry, it looks bad."

The entire student body turned around and looked at the door, almost as one flinching away. Massed breaths were inhaled sharply. One or two of the first years started making little whimpering sounds, as did some of the older students. Hermione stared in total alarmed surprise at the enormous violet lizard, at least seven feet tall, that was standing in the doorway. It looked like some sort of particularly carnivorous dinosaur, on its hind legs with a long powerful tail behind it. However, the arms were very similar to a human's, albeit covered in purple-blue scales and with long talons on the fingers and thumbs.

The other thing that told her it was an intelligent being, aside from the look in the visibly glowing green slit-pupiled eyes was the fact it was wearing clothes.

Overalls, to be precise. They were oddly cut to handle the variant body shape, the tail coming out a short sleeve at the rear, dark blue in color, with a gold logo on the right breast pocket that looked like the head of some form of dragon she'd never read about. Under this were some words she couldn't quite make out from her position at the table.

It was also carrying a very large metal toolbox with the same logo on it.

The silence that the room had fallen into was broken only by slight whimpers, a lot of people breathing, and the irregular hissing rumble from the magical artifact at the top end near the staff table, the blue mystical flames coming out of it writhing and curling through the air.

Even Dumbledore didn't seem to know what to do, judging by his expression of complete befuddlement. Snape was gaping in horrified disbelief, Moody was half-way through drawing his wand but seemed to have thought better of it, and most of the other teachers were simply staring.

"Excuse me," the enormous reptile said politely as it came into the room, walking towards the goblet.

"Ianthe? Where are you?" another voice called, this one higher pitched but also female with the same accent.

"In the big room on your left, the one with all the humans in. It smells of roast chicken," the lizard, apparently called Ianthe, shouted over its shoulder. She sniffed, then licked her lips. "Mmm, chicken. Got to stop off at Fugly's on the way home, I could go for a few chickens," she muttered, her talons clicking on the stone floor as she headed directly for the goblet.

Every head in the entire hall rotated to follow her. A sound at the door made them all snap back to look in that direction, to see a smaller, more lightly built and somewhat more human appearing lizard coming through the door. This one, which was also wearing the same sort of overalls, looked around, smiled widely, and waved. "Hi, everybody. Don't mind us, we'll be out of your way soon." She trotted after the other one, which had stopped at the Goblet and was inspecting it with interest. "Wow. You're right, it's leaking like crazy. And look at that flame shape! Completely wrong."

She climbed the low plinth the magical artifact was on and _stuck her entire head into it!_ Hermione gasped in horror, as did most of the people in the room. Dumbledore, who was still looking extremely confused, raised a hand, whether to use the wand in it, or in warning, she couldn't tell. The second lizard pulled her head out again entirely unharmed, shaking it sadly. "Flow regulators are entirely shot, the main magical flame converter is on its last legs, and some idiot has filled it with paper." She looked around accusingly. "You people clearly don't know how to maintain your artifacts. And who did the spellwork on this? It's awful, all ragged around the edges. The patching in to the main power bus is incredibly amateurish. Not to mention it voids the warranty."

"Who or what are you, creature?" Professor Karkaroff demanded, raising his wand threateningly, the shock appearing to have worn off a little. He looked worried yet furious.

"I'm Saurial." The lizard cocked her head at him. "No? From BBFO?" He looked blankly back, the wand still pointed. "Huh. Guess the records didn't get transferred with this thing."

"Records?" Dumbledore said faintly.

"Records. Like the sales invoice, the maintenance agreement, that sort of thing?" Saurial looked at him inquiringly. The old man shook his head, more in confusion than anything else, Hermione thought. "That's annoying. But it explains why no one called when this started to go unstable. Have you even read the manual?"

"Manual?" This time it was Professor McGonagall.

"For the burner."

"Burner?" Hermione couldn't work out who had said that. The tone of voice was still more than slightly puzzled.

"This thing." Saurial tapped the Goblet. She looked around, being met with a sea of blank faces. "Don't you people even know what it is?" She sighed heavily. "Humans. They never read the manual, and they always lose the records."

Stepping down, she pointed at the Goblet, taking on a lecturing attitude that Hermione recognized instantly. The girl reached into her robes and pulled out a self-inking quill and a sheet of parchment, research reflexes tingling. "This is a class three magic to thermal converter, one of a set of three, provided on contract number SS/1124/BBFO/HVAC to one Salazar Slytherin, human magic user. It was installed as part of a complete environmental package supplied by BBFO during the construction of your castle here. We were in the area and picked up the contract when the previous company failed to deliver. Something about a goblin war, I believe."

Hermione made notes, her tongue between her teeth.

"You… Slytherin… Hogwarts?" Dumbledore said, his eyes bulging a little.

"Are you claiming that you... _built_... Hogwarts?" Professor Snape said in a wondering tone.

Saurial shook her head, smiling. "No, of course not. We merely installed the air conditioning and heating system. It was a union job, of course. Anyway, this particular converter has been badly misused and is on the verge of catastrophic feedback and destabilization, which as I don't need to tell you, would cause a thaumic surge that would trip the main breakers of every major magical power source from here to Brisbane. Probably best not to let that happen."

Hermione made more notes.

Looking around, Saurial sniffed, staring at Professor Moody, who was staring back, even his magical eye fixed and still. "Is there a reason that man smells of a polymorphic catalyst?" she said, nodding at him. Moody went white, raised his wand and fired a wordless curse at her, then bolted.

Everyone ducked at the spellfire, wands coming out all over the room. Saurial looked down at the scorched patch on her overalls and sighed. "Guess he didn't want anyone knowing. Oops. My bad." She ran a hand over the patch which went back to pristine cloth.

Ignoring the uproar as Dumbledore started bellowing orders and staff members ran around like headless chickens after the absconding professor, who Hermione was now beginning to think might not be the real Professor Moody, Saurial turned to her companion who had been waiting beside her patiently.

"We'll fix it under warranty as a gesture of good will. I'll need the number three thaumic spanner, two half-inch mythril washers, and the big orking tool."

Ianthe rummaged around in the toolbox. Ducking slightly as several students jumped up and joined the chaos, Hermione kept watching curiously. And made notes.

Saurial took the first tool, sticking both arms into the Goblet and leaning over it intently. The blue flame didn't seem to bother her at all. She squinted into the innards of the cup, strange sounds coming out of it.

Annoyed at the shouting, which was making it hard to concentrate, Hermione tutted and got up, wandering over to watch from a few feet away. She didn't feel any malice from the two reptilian people, although she could certainly admit they were worryingly large and clearly very dangerous if they wanted to be. Ianthe glanced at her and smiled, rather more teeth exposed in the process than the girl was used to. Even so, she only flinched a little, feeling it was meant in good spirits.

"Orking tool," Saurial said, holding out a hand without looking. Ianthe slapped a weird looking thing into it, the business end of which was simultaneously brightly lit and entirely dark. It disappeared into the inside of the cup, from which Hermione could have sworn she head a cow mooing seconds later.

"Left handed fusion wrench," Saurial requested, holding out a hand again. Another weird looking item made an appearance. Bright light flashed up from the cup. "Five megathaum fuse, please."

Ianthe dropped something that was hard to look at into the outstretched hand, which retracted. A moment later it came back. " _Five_ megathaum. This is a ten."

"Sorry, they must have got mixed up when I dropped the kit," Ianthe said, sounding a little embarrassed and quickly swapping the thing for a different one. There was a grunt of mild irritation from her companion as she took it and leaned deeper into the Goblet. The hissing sound had become louder but more even and Hermione could feel heat coming from it for the first time.

"Great, that's got the flow regulators sorted. Here, put this in a disposal pack, will you?" A lump of glowing hot metal was handed over, small rivulets of black goop dripping from it. Ianthe accepted it with an expression of distaste, holding it between two talon-tips.

"God, this one is a complete mess, isn't it?" she commented as she poked around in her toolbox, pulling out a large cylindrical object with a screw on lid. "Hey, could you just unscrew that for me?" she asked Hermione, holding it out. The girl stared, then shrugged, taking it from her and doing as requested. "Thanks." Ianthe dropped the thing she was holding into the container, then retrieved the lid which Hermione held out wordlessly and screwed it back on.

Putting it down, she smiled at the young girl, looking around the room, which was full of people running hither and yon, somehow the three of them in a small island of calm in the middle. "Is it always this noisy around here?" she asked curiously.

"No, we've got three schools worth of people here at the moment, which makes it very difficult to study properly," Hermione sighed.

"Oh. That's irritating," Ianthe sympathized. "Got exams coming up?"

"Not for a while, but I like to be prepared," she replied.

"Sensible. Don't leave things to the last moment, I've always thought."

"I need the replacement flame converter now," Saurial announced, interrupting them. Ianthe pulled a box out of her tool case and slit the tape around it with a claw, removing something that looked like a very shiny new version of the mess she'd put in the other container. This she handed to Saurial, who took it and went back to work. Strange muffled crunching sounds came from inside the goblet, while the flame hissed more loudly still, sweeping through a rainbow of colors.

"Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?" Hermione asked after a moment, watching with interest.

"Fair amount, yes. We get around. A lot of these other universes are temporally sort of unlinked from ours, or maybe it's the other way around. I'm not the expert on that sort of thing. Metis would probably know. Anyway, it means we can visit them at different periods without using time travel, which is a pain in the ass and can be extremely dangerous."

Nodding, Hermione made some more notes. Ianthe snickered. "A friend of mine is like that. You'd probably like him." She looked around, then up, before adding, "He's not much on magic, though, but if you want pure tech he's damn good."

"Technology doesn't work around magic," Hermione said sadly.

Ianthe looked puzzled. "Sure it does. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with your magic. Or someone has been playing around with some sort of tech-suppressing spell. They're pretty dangerous, they tend to have some rather bad long term effects on the mind." She shrugged. "I've seen it before. Lack of common sense, a sort of unpleasant conformity to authority… Of course, some of the more disreputable rulers have tried using them for exactly those reasons. They make the population very suggestible. But it also tends to reduce birthrate a lot. Eventually there's a population crash and..." She waved a hand dismissively. "The problem solves itself in the long run, but not in a good way."

Hermione stared, thought hard, then made some more notes. That sounded like something she needed to research more.

"OK, all done," Saurial announced, handing her companion a handful of tools and stepping back. She prodded a particular rune on the edge of the cup, the hissing sound of the now entirely even flame becoming a loud roar, the flame going almost white and giving off a massive amount of heat. Hermione quickly retreated, as did everyone else in the hall, the sound making them all stop dead and stare in shock again.

Sticking her hand into the flame, which looked entirely suicidal, the lizard-creature nodded thoughtfully, fiddling with the runes. The flame changed size and shape a few times, going brilliant blue-white at one point and nearly reaching the ceiling. The girl watching with an open mouth thought it looked remarkably like the things she'd seen on TV at home of rockets the Americans had launched, only the other way up.

Apparently entirely unaffected by the incredible heat, Saurial smiled, turning the flame down again somehow. It stabilized at about three feet high, giving off a pleasant warmth. The color was a pale deep blue like a gas flame. "There we are. All back to specification. I've replaced all the non-serviceable parts and cleaned out all the junk that was in there. Please don't drop paper into it again, it's not good for it. I also removed the unauthorized spells that had been crudely spliced in. Some of them were downright dangerous. We won't let it affect the warranty this time as a gesture of good faith, and because it destabilizing wouldn't be in anyone's interest, but if this happens again there will be a service charge."

She looked meaningfully at Dumbledore where he was standing near the head table, staring at her with a look like he couldn't believe what he was hearing or seeing. Reaching into the toolbox on the floor, Ianthe handed her companion a large envelope, which Saurial opened. The lizard creature pulled out some paperwork, quickly looking through it, as she walked over to the ancient Headmaster. "OK. Here's a replacement manual, a copy of the service agreement, and a worksheet covering the repairs I've just done. Please sign here." She tapped a place on the form she was holding out, a perfectly ordinary ball-point pen in her other hand.

Appearing to have more or less given up trying to work out what the hell was happening, Dumbledore took the form after a couple of seconds, turning to put it on the nearest table. He signed it with the pen she'd given him, then handed both back. Saurial flicked the paper with a finger, then separated it into two copies, handing him one and folding the other. "Obviously, you will need to reinstall the burner into the main heating duct system. It's not going to do much where it is. The instructions cover that process, it's a simple plug and play system. Ideally you should have all three running, but there's enough redundancy that one will work pretty well."

She smiled at him. "If you need more, we're happy to sell you some. Our contact details are in the back of the manual."

"Ah… thank you?" he said uncertainly.

"You're welcome, Mr..." She unfolded the paper again. "...Dumbledore. Please don't allow the burner to get into such a shocking state again, it doesn't need much maintenance, but leaving it like that is just foolhardy." She looked around at the people watching her. "Sorry to have interrupted your event. I hope you can get back to it soon. We'll just be off now."

Saurial walked back to where Ianthe had finished packing away her tools, slapping her companion on the back. "Come on, we still have to go and see that damn Odin character. I heard he's claiming that spear I made is another one of his own design, like the hammer. I think I need to have a word with the klepto."

"He's really irritating you, isn't he?" Ianthe commented as the two reptiles walked towards the doorway. She waved to Hermione, who waved back.

"Well, yes, he's being rude. My negative energy modulation oscillator was one thing, it sort of has a mind of its own, but the hammer? He just found that and was passing it off as his own work. I'm going to have to start signing everything, I think."

The voices trailed off as the two figures left the room, turning right and disappearing. Hermione watched, then turned to inspect the other people present. No one seemed to know what to do. Eventually, deciding that the fun was over, she shrugged and left as well, thinking she might swing by the library and do some research.

It was never _not_ a good time to learn, in her view.


	2. Gathering no Moss

_Not entirely sure where this one suddenly came from, I have to admit, but it kept bugging me so I wrote it down..._

* * *

"That greasy git!"

Ron stomped around, gesticulating and swearing, the nearly empty Gryffindor common room echoing to the sound of his aggrieved voice. Hermione sighed, looking at him with irritation, then glanced at Harry who was sitting next to her on the couch, staring into the fire.

"Merlin's hairy ones, Harry, he had no call to say what he did," the red-headed teenager went on, stopping in front of his friend and looking at him. Harry raised his eyes for a moment, shrugged, and went back to looking at the flames as they slowly consumed the wood.

"I'm used to it. Snape doesn't like me."

"Snape doesn't like _anyone_ , including himself, but he picks on you more than anyone else," Ron spluttered. "And Dumbledore lets him get away with it! What's that about?" He looked between Harry and Hermione. "Either of you have any idea? Any other professor would be out on their arse for half what Snape pulls, but no one does anything to stop him. I'm sick of it."

"Not a lot we can do," Harry muttered. "Dumbledore is a busy man. Snape is a professor."

"Oh, sod it, will you stand up for yourself for once, Harry?" Ron snapped.

Harry looked at him again, frowning. "Thanks, mate. When did you get so protective of me?"

"I've always had your back, Harry," Ron replied, looking hurt.

"Really? I can remember… three, no, four times just this year when someone started a rumor about me and you came and asked me if it was true," Harry pointed out. "Most people would think that a friend who… _had your back_ … would have just _known_ it was a rumor without needing to ask."

Ron had the grace to look abashed, Hermione noted as she glanced up from her book again, feeling slightly amused. It was true, the Weasley boy did have an annoying tendency to go along with the crowd whenever one of the never-ending stream of rumors about their friend hit the public's nerve. Most of those rumors were so self-evidently untrue, often ludicrously so, that she was constantly surprised that _anyone_ believed them.

Truly, wizards were a gullible lot, she thought darkly.

There was definitely something in what that strange reptilian visitor had told her the year before last, on one of the most memorable occasions she could ever recall.

The girl had spent a _lot_ of time researching a number of things that she'd learned from the large purple lizard, finding that all of them appeared to indeed be true, although terribly badly documented for the most part. In her more suspicious moments she thought this was probably deliberate. Certainly, without some form of clue, it was unlikely that anyone would be able to track down most of the references she'd put together that showed that the way magic and technology interacted so badly was almost definitely the result of a spell such as that which Ianthe had mentioned.

The information was scattered throughout half the library and had taken her most of a term to simply _find_ , never mind correlate and consider.

She was still working on who was responsible, but it was clear it wasn't a new thing. Knowing the wizarding world, which she was in some ways losing patience with, she wouldn't have been surprised to find out that no one these days had the faintest idea about the situation. Or, if told, would actually believe it either.

It played very nicely into the hands of the more prejudiced of those who ran the place, after all.

She still didn't know what, if anything, she could do with the information on a large scale. However, it was starting to give her some intriguing ideas about small scale, local experiments she could run…

Having a real radio that would let her listen to the BBC, for example, would be very useful. She missed classical music, and some of the more interesting discussion shows.

Attempting to resume her research, having long since finished her homework, and given up on trying to get Ron to finish his, she sighed very faintly as the boy kept on stomping around and muttering what he'd like to do to Snape. While she shared the sentiment, it was a pointless activity, in her view. _Talking_ and _doing_ were two entirely different things, after all.

Ron was a great one for the former. Not so much on the latter, though. Unless the doing involved food, of course, then all bets were off, she though with a slight internal smirk.

Poor Harry looked depressed, she saw when she looked at him again, concerned about his lack of response. Normally when Ron started off like this, Harry would either try to calm him down, or join in, but now he was just sitting there passively, radiating unhappiness. Not all that surprising considering the pressure being heaped on the poor sod.

The events of that sudden visitation nearly fourteen months ago were still being felt. Unmasking the fake Moody, even as accidentally as it had apparently been, although she had her suspicions there as well, had set into motion a whole series of actions. When the aurors who had been called in had finally cornered the man and stunned him after a fierce battle, a plan that was horrifying had been uncovered, one that would if not stopped almost certainly have resulted in the resurrection of a particular Dark Lord who everyone had thought was long gone.

Everyone except his followers, of whom there seemed to be far too many, and Harry, of course.

Quite a lot had come out in the aftermath of _that_ little revelation. The basilisk, the diary, the whole concept of something called a horcrux… That had made a lot of people very, very nervous.

For good reason. She'd managed to find a couple of books in the library that had been overlooked when someone, probably either Riddle or Dumbledore, or both, had gone through it and removed everything on the subject. They didn't give much in the way of details, luckily for her own peace of mind, but they told her enough to make her think they'd had a very lucky escape.

And wonder if there were more of the damn things out there. Riddle, despite his many, many, _many_ serious flaws, was a legitimate magical prodigy, a true genius in the subject. He was also utterly without a moral compass, she felt, and extremely paranoid.

She knew that were she in his position, she wouldn't have stopped at one. Or possibly three, if you counted Quirrell, and that horrible little homunculus that Wormtail had been bowing and scraping to.

The only good thing about the whole sorry episode was that when Madame Bones and her people had finished ripping the fake Moody's mind to pieces, they'd managed to use what they learned to trap the traitor and his master, kill the latter, capture the former, and as a result clear Harry's godfather's name.

The poor man was going to need a lot of treatment to recover, she thought sadly. But he was at least out of that foul prison and at no risk of returning.

However, even this victory hadn't really changed Harry's fortunes for long. The Prophet still had it in for him for some damn reason, the Ministry didn't like him either, and the fickle public were quick to believe any rumor started blaming him for whatever new problem came up. And there were still a lot of Death Eaters on the loose, many of the more dangerous ones including Draco's father and aunt having been warned somehow before the Aurors came for them.

No, the problem certainly wasn't over yet, she was sure. And somehow it still revolved around her best friend.

Watching Ron pace around and have his face go nearly the same color as his hair, she pondered an idea that had been percolating in the back of her mind since she'd gone home at Christmas, a couple of months ago. Having done all her holiday homework, and some more that she set herself, she'd finally run out of things to read and dipped into the mundane books around the house, settling in the end on her father's old science fiction collection. With the speed she read, she'd gone through the entire thing by the time she went back to school.

And one story in particular had given her an unnerving idea.

One she wasn't certain was possible, but one that if it _was_ , pointed her towards a way to rid the world of that suppurating pimple known as Tom Riddle.

A fairly horrifying way, true, especially for a wizard, but considering what she'd seen over the years, and learned since that Halloween, one she was becoming convinced was something she'd have no real problem using.

Although, she was going to have to be very careful, and make absolutely certain no one _ever_ found out what she'd done. If they did… It wouldn't be good.

Closing her book, she started making notes on a spare piece of parchment in the shorthand her mother had taught her years ago, knowing it was unreadable to anyone else in the castle. She was going to have to do a lot of research, find the materials… and where was she going to get a piece of skin with a Dark Mark on it?

A glance at the fulminating Ron Weasley gave her the answer. She started smiling grimly.

"Um… Hermione?" Harry said, making her look at her. Ron was staring, having stopped waving his arms and working himself up into a state.

"Yes, Harry?" she said.

"Why… are you smirking like Bellatrix when she's in a particularly dangerous mood?" he asked very carefully.

"Bloody hell, Harry, that's terrifying," Ron muttered a moment later.

Hermione tried to look innocent. "I have no idea what you mean, Harry," she said calmly. "I just thought of something funny, that's all. Never mind. Now, Ron, have you finished the essay Professor McGonagall set today? It's due tomorrow afternoon, you know."

Ron sighed loudly. "Merlin, Hermione, do you ever stop thinking about schoolwork?"

She raised an eyebrow at him in the manner of the aforementioned professor, causing him to take a step back. "She'd doing it again, Harry," he mumbled. "Make her stop."

"Books, Ron," she directed, pointing her quill at the pile on the table next to the couch. "Come on, I know you can do it."

"You're not going to shut up about it, are you?" he grumbled.

She smiled sweetly at him. "What do _you_ think?"

"That you're _weird,_ " he retorted with a frown.

Nevertheless, he sat down, picked up the relevant book, and opened it, causing her to look approving before she went back to her own work.

Now, where was she going to find a material strong enough to take the stress, she wondered. A quick calculation showed her that it would be incredible.

' _Hmm. I know someone who might be able to help_ ,' she thought. ' _If I can get my hands on that document..._ '

This was going to be more complex than she'd thought.

Good.

She liked a challenge.

* * *

Hermione was ready by Easter, at least for the initial stages of her plan. Public opinion waxed and waned, while Death Eater attacks continued then lapsed. It was clear to her, and she presumed the people whose job it really was to deal with the threat, that Riddle, or part of him, was still out there somewhere. It proved to her that he had made more horcruxes.

It also was taking a terrible toll on poor Harry. The visions that the Dark Fuckwit was somehow responsible for sending her friend caused him horrible nightmares and sleepless night after sleepless night. She felt helpless over her inability to help, angry at Dumbledore and the authorities who seemed perfectly happy to use Harry's notoriety for their own purposes yet failed to back him when it was most needed, and furious beyond sanity at Riddle himself.

The creature had to be stopped.

Everyone seemed to expect Harry to be the one to do it. She had a growing suspicion that he himself expected to die in the process. It would explain the constant air of depression he emitted these days.

That said, his home situation was undoubtedly responsible for much of this. Even now she didn't know for sure what happened when he returned to Privet Drive, but she had a shrewd idea that if she ever found out, she was going to do something awful to those Dursley people.

All this had left her more determined than ever to try her plan. If it worked… one way or another the problem of he-who-is-a-pain-in-the-arse would be over. If it didn't work… well, hopefully she'd survive it, but that was why she was going to do it a long way from anyone and anything she valued, by herself.

And, of course, that kept any other wizard or witch from discovering what she was going to try. She didn't much fancy the repercussions if it actually performed the way she hoped it would. It was vital that no one know who was responsible, or how it was done.

Ever.

Flipping through her notebook, she checked once more that she had everything required for this first part of the operation. It had taken a little light thievery of Harry's invisibility cloak, careful timing to ensure that Dumbledore and his familiar were both away for several hours, and an absolutely hair-raising flight on a broom, something that was still giving her palpitations when she thought about it. However, she'd been successful, managing to get into, and out of, the headmaster's office without anyone noticing. Not even the portraits had seen anything.

Luckily her guess as to where the paperwork would be had been accurate, and a very quick whispered copy spell had given her a duplicate, while the original went back into the drawer. Now, she pulled out the parchment and looked at it yet again, surprised at the simplicity of the operation detailed on it. Once couldn't even really call it a ritual. It was more akin to calling a phone number, not entirely surprising considering where it had come from. As far as she could tell it wasn't strictly speaking magic at all and wouldn't trip any of the Ministry underage magic alarms, although she was still slightly apprehensive. But it was worth the risk, small as it was.

Knowing that her parents were out visiting friends and unlikely to return for at least three hours, she moved her wand in a small loop, concentrating on the result she was after. A flash of light made her blink.

A pause of a few seconds was followed by a beep, then a male voice said in a professional tone, " _BBFO Interdimensional helpline, how may I direct your call?_ ", the voice emanating from nowhere obvious.

"Ah… Hello? My name is Hermione Granger," she said a little uncertainly, somewhat surprised that it had actually worked. "I'm trying to get in contact with Ianthe, please? We met a while ago when she visited my school with Saurial."

" _Certainly, Miss Granger, please hold and I'll transfer your call_ ," the voice said, sounding a little warmer. A short snatch of unfamiliar but tuneful music played out of thin air, making her smile a little.

The music stopped and a voice she recognized spoke. " _Hermione Granger? Ah, yes, I remember. The Great Burner Adventure of Hogwarts, right?_ "

"That's it," she smiled. "I need some advice, and possibly some help. I was hoping you'd be willing to aid me. It's quite important."

" _Well, we don't have an official policy for such things, but we're always open to interesting new experiences_ ," the voice of the large violet reptile replied with a definitely laugh in it. " _What's the problem?_ "

"A homicidal dark wizard who apparently can't be killed," she said.

" _Ah. One of those. They're always a nuisance. Do you have a plan, or are you looking for some form of wizard-repellent?_ "

She laughed for a moment. "No, I have a plan, I think. But I need a second opinion and I can't talk to any of the wizards here. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I even mention my idea, I'll be… disappeared… or something like that. It's a bit radical and the British Wizarding World is nothing if not conservative. To excess, really."

" _I understand. Magic isn't my field of expertise, but I know a fair amount about it and people who know a lot more. Tell me what your idea is and I'll see if it makes any sense_."

"Thank you," Hermione replied gratefully, checking the time on the clock on the mantelpiece. Plenty of time yet. Sitting down in a comfortable chair, she started outlining her idea, causing Ianthe to chuckle more than once in the next half hour.

" _Sneaky. And vicious. I like that. Hmm. Hold on, I need to talk to Saurial_ ," Ianthe commented when she was finished.

"All right," she replied, relieved at the opportunity to get a drink of water for her dry throat. The music came back, for a couple of minutes this time, causing her to start humming along with it.

It was quite catchy, she thought.

When it stopped, she put her glass down and sat up again, her pen poised over her notebook, just in case. " _Hermione?_ "

"Still here."

" _Great. Look, I talked it over with Saurial and Metis, they think it will work. Magic in your world is a little odd, most places it wouldn't do what you want, despite what your story claimed. But because of the way your wizard's magic seems to operate, it should end up doing exactly what you think it will. But you're going to need some special equipment, the stuff you were thinking of using is nowhere near strong enough to handle the load. It would fail catastrophically and the end result would be… rather loud._ "

Ianthe's voice was very dry for that last bit.

" _Not something you'd want to be near, believe me. Metis' calculations for the damage are pretty impressive. Anyway, Saurial is just making what you need. Pro bono, it seems like a decent thing to do. As a precaution the device will time out in six months, or after one use, so it doesn't fall into the wrong hands, OK? So you either have to use it by then, or call me for another one_."

"Thank you, very much indeed, Ianthe," Hermione said with true gratitude. "This is far more than I expected."

" _Hey, you seem like a good kid, and smart too. Dark wizards are a pain in the ass on a good day. Saurial herself has experience with that sort of thing and grumbles about it when it comes up_." Ianthe sounded amused again. " _Let me know how it goes. I've included a couple of things in the package that should help you get your material component as well. Instructions are in there too._ "

"That's incredibly generous of you all," she managed.

" _No problem, it's an interesting little example of applied magitech. When you finish your schooling, get in touch, we might have some work for you_."

"I think I'd like that," she smiled.

" _So do I. OK, the package is ready, we're sending it through_."

An orange-glowing hole in space opened up, a box about two feet on a side dropping through onto the carpet, then the hole disappeared again. It had taken mere seconds, although she was still gaping. " _There you go. Good luck, and be careful_."

"Thank you again, Ianthe."

Hermione looked at the box with wonder.

" _You're welcome, Hermione. Bye._ "

"Bye."

The very faint background sound that had accompanied whatever magic or technology had allowed her to speak to the great lizard stopped, showing that the link was no more. Standing up, the bushy-haired girl bent and picked up the surprisingly heavy box, taking it to the dining room table and using a sharp knife to slit the tape holding it closed. Peeling back the flaps, she started taking things out of it, inspecting each of them with huge interest and massive admiration for the skill of the one who'd made them.

Assembling the parts, she looked at the result, then smiled in a nasty manner, before picking up the stack of paper that had accompanied the box, settling down to read, nodding every now and then.

Those lizards were _good_. They'd thought of several things after only minutes that she'd missed in months.

When she finished the instructions, she looked at the items in front of her again, then carefully packed everything away into the box again. It would go into her trunk to be taken with her when she went back after the holidays.

There was still some work to do, which carried a risk, but with what she now had, she felt it wasn't going to be beyond her. Humming that tune under her breath, she headed up to her bedroom carrying the box and wondering if Riddle would feel anything. She hoped so.

* * *

The only thing Severus Snape had as warning was a faint pop sound from behind him, and a sharp sting in the middle of his back. He was just in the process of turning when the world went away.

* * *

Hermione looked at what she was holding with disgust, but swallowed her bile, slipped it into a charmed preservation container, then bent over the unconscious Potions professor and stuck the small gray-white circle on his exposed arm. Watching for a moment to make sure it was operating correctly, she nodded to herself, adjusted the small device she was holding, aimed, and pressed the button. There was another pop, then the thing crumbled to dust which flowed between her fingers, as the instructions had said would happen. Brushing the remains off on Snape's robe, she studied him, wishing she could give him a swift kick in the ribs, before she turned and hurried off, making sure Harry's cloak was tightly wrapped around her.

She needed to get it back to him before he woke up, although considering the amount of sleeping potion she'd snuck into his supper, that would take a while.

* * *

Waking abruptly, Snape looked wildly around. Why the hell was he lying on the floor in a dark and chilly part of the castle, half-way between the Great Hall and his quarters? And why did his arm itch? And why was he so ungodly _hungry?_

He never found out the answer to the first question. The second would be answered when he undressed and found, to his utter astonishment, bewilderment, and joy, that the Dark Mark that had plagued him half his life had vanished.

The third would also remain unanswered, but become irrelevant as he got up, brushed himself down, and stomped off towards the kitchens in search of a seriously large midnight snack.

It would be nearly an hour before he discovered his wand was missing.

* * *

Finally everything was set. Hermione was ready to execute her plan, after months of preparation, some very unpleasant work with a skinning knife and some preservatives, vast amounts of research that had left her exhausted since she was also determined not to slack off on her normal studies, and some help from an unusual friend.

She'd taken her exams, hopefully done well, and gone home for the summer, saying her goodbyes to her friends. Not that there were a huge number of them, but Harry hadn't pulled away when she hugged him, and Ron had actually stopped eating for a moment to wish her a good summer and invite her over to the Burrow at some point. Luna had looked at her for several seconds, smiled, and told her that lizards were interesting creatures, but could be dangerous if they stepped on you.

Slightly puzzled, Hermione had merely nodded and wished the odd little blonde a good holiday. She'd tracked Neville down in the greenhouses and chatted for a little while before they'd all made their way down to the train station.

Now, three days after arriving home, she was on the point of either succeeding in ridding them of a particularly turbulent wizard, or failing utterly and having to go back without anything to show for it.

It had taken her considerable effort to locate a suitably isolated place to put her plan into effect, as she needed somewhere far away from either magical or mundane interference, but after much research she'd found an abandoned factory on the edge of town that was at least two miles from any witnesses. Having managed to persuade her parents that she was going into London to visit some bookshops and that she could do it alone, she'd taken a different train to a different station, then a taxi which had dropped her off in the middle of nowhere.

It would be a long walk back to a point she could catch the train back, but she wouldn't be burdened with the backpack she had her equipment in on the return journey, only the pack itself.

Pulling a torch out of the pack, she flicked it on, then leaned on the old door to the side of the large decaying building she was standing in front of, having slipped under the elderly wire fence surrounding the site. Insects buzzed and chirped in the grass surrounding the place, birds calling in the trees, but aside from that and the very faint sounds of distant traffic on the motorway a few miles away, she was utterly alone. As far as she'd been able to find out, no one had visited this place in years.

The door resisted for a moment, then creaked and swung open with a splintering sound as one of the hinges tore out of the ancient wood. Sticking her light into the gap she panned it around, then went in after it. Half an hour of careful exploration later, she was sure she was alone, and had found a perfect spot to set everything up. In the middle of the building was some form of workshop, with a store-room that had a metal door. It was completely empty, holes in the cement floor showing where shelves had been removed years before, but the door was solid and had a hasp she could put the padlock she'd brought along onto.

She'd been cunning, purchasing a new lock for the shed, then replacing the old one with that and purloining the original, so she had a functional but suitably old looking lock for this purpose. Just in case anyone ever checked.

She'd also nicked all the keys for it, just to be sure.

And was wearing vinyl gloves, having wiped all the fingerprints off everything she had with her.

One couldn't be too careful.

Now, she put the pack down on an old piece of cardboard moldering on the floor, bending down and pulling parts out of it. She quickly assembled the components into their final form, giving the heavy gleaming wheel in the middle of it a flick with her finger. It rotated smoothly, completely silently. She had no idea what on earth it was made of, the gray metal was much too heavy to be anything natural, but it was also apparently basically indestructible, so ideal for her purposes.

Taking the section of preserved skin she'd peeled from the severed forearm of her Potions teacher, she carefully rolled it up and pushed it into the hollow axle of the wheel, screwing the cap on afterwards. Using the wand she'd stolen from Snape at the same time and had used to cut his arm off with, she inscribed a few simple runes on the base of the very basic machine she'd put together. The entire thing was almost stupidly straightforward in its operation and construction.

Lowering the cover over the small but heavy wheel, she checked everything carefully, then nodded in satisfaction. It was ready.

But would it work?

"Only one way to find out," she mumbled, giving her stolen wand a flick, then prodding the first rune with it. Magic flared and the wheel began to turn.

She smiled, slowly and malevolently.

"Brilliant," Hermione said in a low voice. "Right, then, Tommy boy, let's see how you like this, shall we?"

The wheel was slowly but surely picking up speed, the frictionless bearings silent, but the sound of air over the thing making a faint whoosh. After a moment's consideration, she cast a number of silencing charms over the whole thing, nodding when the sound stopped, then left the room having picked everything up and made sure she hadn't left any traces behind that could identify her. Pulling out her padlock she snapped it closed on the old hasp, tugged on it, nodded happily, and went home.

Behind her, in the pitch dark of the old abandoned store-room in the middle of the factory, the wheel spun faster.

And faster.

And faster.

* * *

Amelia Bones looked at the parchment she was holding, then raised her eyes to meet those of her second in command. "What the hell?" she asked.

Kingsley shrugged.

"All I can tell you is in that report."

"Completely drained of magic? How on earth was that done?"

"No one has the faintest idea. Every one of them died from total magic exhaustion. More or less all at the same time as far as we can determine, too. They all had Dark Marks as well, which appeared to have burst into flames. Witnesses said that the victims screamed, grabbed their arms, then just fell over. Most of them were dead before anyone could do anything."

"And Potter?"

"He collapsed in the middle of Diagon Alley, the healers say he had some sort of seizure, but they expect him to make a full recovery. It must be connected somehow, it happened at the same time, but the boy himself can't remember anything and he certainly wasn't a Death Eater. No sign of a Dark Mark, obviously. The goblins are all pissy about something that happened in the Lestrange Vault at what must have also been the same time, but they're not saying what it was, just that there was a security breach and they're investigating."

"That is… worryingly peculiar," Bones muttered, reading the report a second time.

"I agree. But no one can explain any of it. All we know is that every single Death Eater we've been looking for is now dead as a kipper, not to mention dozens of ones we _didn't_ know about. We have reports from France, Spain, Bulgaria, and several other places of similar events happening, although the bulk of them are in Britain. Looks like either Riddle did something that backfired badly, or someone took care of the problem for us. Personally, I don't care either way."

"No, I can't say I'll lose much sleep over it myself," she replied, putting the report down. "But some of these names are very concerning. How did we miss them?"

"Almost certainly due to collusion with various people high up in the Ministry," he said with a frown. "I expect you could name names the same as I could."

"Yes, I suspect you're right," she sighed. "Well, nothing for it, we have to clean house. This is a good start, but no matter what the cause, we need to take advantage of the opportunity we've been handed. Get Tonks, anyone else you can personally vouch for, and we'll draw up a plan of attack. We'll start with our department. When that's definitely not compromised, the Ministry as a whole needs a good spring cleaning, I think."

"It's the middle of summer," he pointed out.

"All the more reason to get to work, then," she said, smiling suddenly. "Let's see if we can fix some of our more egregious problems before the children go back to school, shall we?"

He smiled back, then left to start on his orders. Alone in her office, the head of the DMLE looked at the report, wondering what had happened and who was responsible.

It seemed entirely likely she'd never find out, unfortunately.

* * *

"So what _did_ you do that summer after the OWLs?" Harry asked, sitting down beside the woman who was still his best friend and handing her one of the cups of tea he was holding. She looked at him, accepting the cup, then closed her book.

"Do?" she asked, her voice neutral.

"Do. I _know_ you, Hermione. I've known you for twelve years." Harry gazed at his companion. "You were the only person who wasn't surprised about what happened. You're also the only one I know who's smart enough to have pulled something like that off. And you have a ruthless streak in you that's terrifying, that wouldn't balk at doing what needed to be done, when you'd convinced yourself it was actually necessary. You're the one who finished off the Death Eaters, and Riddle, I'm certain of that, but I can't work out how you did it."

"The Aurors are still looking for the cause of that event," she said thoughtfully, raising the cup to her lips and sipping it, while gazing across it into his eyes. "So are the Unspeakables. Whoever did it could get into a lot of trouble if anyone found out. They killed over two hundred people."

"Over two hundred murderers," Harry pointed out. "After the law was changed in 98, being a member of the Voldemort Death Cult became a capital crime. Even if the person responsible came forward now, they'd be pardoned although it predated the law change, I know that for a fact."

"Perhaps the person who did it, assuming it wasn't just an accident, doesn't want the method to become known?" She smiled a little at him. "It might be considered a Dark Art. Or simply too dangerous to become widely disseminated. Like the secret to making a mundane atomic bomb, for example."

"Hmm." He watched her drink some more tea. "I suppose that's a good point. I'm still curious, though."

She was silent for some time. "Funny thing, really, the way the magical world is so dismissive of mundane knowledge. Even though the non-magical world has achieved things that are far beyond the wizarding one, we still tend to treat them like simpletons at best. Most of us, anyway. It's a dangerous thing, underestimating someone, without any good reason."

Harry nodded slowly. He was well aware of her feelings on the matter.

"Have you ever heard of sympathetic magic?" she asked.

"Old magic, right? Before formal spell work. Some sort of ritual?"

"Sort of. It's primitive, by our standards. Like calls to like, part of the whole is equivalent to the whole, symbols standing in for the thing itself. The principal of contagion is another version. So is what is popularly known as a voodoo doll. They all rely on symbology and intent. No real spell in our modern terms." She was watching him now. "Thing is, though… it works. If you know the trick to it, which isn't hard. Weirdly enough, the mundanes know this more than the magical world does. I don't know why."

"All right… I'm not sure where you're going with this, but all right."

"All the Dark Marks were exactly identical, you know."

Harry looked at his friend, then nodded slowly. He was beginning to get a suspicion of what she was talking about in a roundabout way.

"All representing something, a link to a greater power. Riddle. His horcruxes were similar in a way, only a deeper connection, because they were actually part of him once. Arguably they still were even when they were in their containers."

She reached out and traced the barely visible line of his scar with one finger, then dropped her hand.

"All those people, and things, all linked together by magic. What happens if you pull the magic out of the thing in the middle?"

His eyes widened slightly. "You pull it out of… all of them."

"That's certainly what one theory would tell you."

"But how would you pull out the magic?" he asked after a long pause.

Rather than answer, she got up, going to the bookcase on the other side of the room. A brief search produced a book which she brought back and handed to him. He looked at the brightly colored cover, the work a novel from the mundane world.

"Who is this Niven person?"

"A science fiction author. A very good one. My father loved his stuff." Taking the book, she flipped through it, stopping on one page, then handed it back. "That explains part of it."

He read the story carefully. When he finished, he raised his eyes to meet hers, his tea long forgotten.

"Merlin..." he breathed.

"It wouldn't work if it wasn't for the fact that our form of magic relies on an internal source, the so called magical core," she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. "That story got some of it wrong, but the idea was sound. All I… I mean all one, would need to do would be to set up something that would use magic up as fast as possible, without any limitations, and link it to the magical source in question. A carefully preserved, active Dark Mark, for example, would serve as the link, if a simple ritual was followed. A dynamic spell to generate ever increasing motion would work very nicely as a power sink, too."

"In the story the spell also held the device together," he noted. "It exploded when the magic ran out."

"That would be very dangerous," she said quietly. "The amount of kinetic energy involved from draining the magic from over two hundred wizards and witches released all at once would be catastrophic. A better solution would be a material strong enough to handle the speed and allow it to gradually dissipate over time."

"Is there such a material?"

"If you know who to ask, I believe so," she said, opening her eyes and looking at him.

"Where would… one… get a Dark Mark from?" he wondered. The answer struck him suddenly as she smiled in an evil manner. "Snape?! _That's_ what happened to him! And why he didn't die like the others."

"I suppose it's possible that someone could remove the Mark and preserve it," Hermione nodded. "You'd probably have to take the arm too, though. Messy work."

He decided not to ask.

"Anyway, I'm tired, Harry, it's late. Thank you for the tea. I need to get some sleep, I have a long way to go tomorrow."

"One day you'll have to tell me where you disappear to every summer," he smiled, holding her hand.

"One day, I probably will, Harry." She leaned forward and kissed him. "One day. Good night." Standing, she went into her bedroom and closed the door softly. He smiled after her, then took the teacups into the kitchen, washed them, and let himself out.


	3. The Delivery

_A further installment in Hermione's journey to the Lizard side..._

* * *

Hermione looked up from her book as someone sat down next to her, smiling at Harry when she saw who it was. He was covered in bits of grass and mud and holding his broom in one hand, both of them looking somewhat damp. Even so, he seemed in a good mood.

"I suppose that expression means your practice went well," she commented, marking her place with a finger and closing the book for the moment.

He nodded, putting the broom down next to them and leaning forward to warm his hands on the fire. It was still only mid-October, but this far north the temperature was rapidly dropping, which was causing some very foggy and damp days. People who went outside and flew around hundreds of feet in the air tended to come back cold and wet, as Harry was proving.

"It was brilliant, actually. We're really on form this year. And with all the excitement over the summer, half of Slytherin being pulled out until people work out what happened, and the general chaos, we've got a good chance to win again if we keep it up." He rubbed his hands together and held them out again. "Strange thing, all that fuss. I wonder what killed all those Death Eaters?"

Hermione shrugged, her expression neutral. "We may never know. Probably something that His Darkness did that went horribly wrong."

"Suppose so." Harry grinned at her. "Can't say it bothers me. Life has been a lot less complicated and dangerous since those weird lizard-people turned up in fourth year, and now with all the Death Eaters having eaten too much Death, I'm really glad I can just get on with life. I was starting to think that Riddle had it in for me."

"I have no idea why you'd think that, Harry," Hermione said gravely, but couldn't hold her smile back for long in the face of his laughter.

"Me either. Strange, isn't it? A man tries to kill you half a dozen times, then offs himself somehow along with all his minions, or whatever actually happened. You almost start to feel left out."

She giggled, shaking her head. "Somehow I doubt you actually believe that."

"Not really, no." He leaned back, apparently warm now. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if that stupid goblet, or burner, or whatever it was, had actually been used for that daft TriWizard thing. You know as well as I do that I'd have somehow ended up in it."

She couldn't deny that this was probably quite likely, considering all the other strange coincidences that had plagued his first few years at Hogwarts. In her darker moments, she was fairly convinced about there being some form of plot against her friend, and not necessarily all from the supposedly evil side of the wizarding world…

"Since they did whatever it was they did to it, though, it's been a lot warmer in here," he added after a few reflective moments, looking over at the nearest place warm air was coming from, through a mass of small holes low down on the wall. Everyone had always known they were there but no one knew what their purpose was until the staff, after Saurial and Ianthe had left that day some two years ago, had read the manual they'd left and put the newly repaired artifact back where it had apparently come from over five hundred years earlier.

Hermione wondered where the other two had gone, considering there were supposedly three of them originally. Quite a few people had tried to work that out as well but so far no one had. It was just one of those mysteries of history.

Both of them looked around as several more people entered the common room, spotting Ron in the middle of the group. He talked to a couple of them before heading their way. Sitting down on Harry's other side, he leaned back and relaxed. "Glad that's over. I'm starving."

"Have you done your Transfiguration homework yet?" Hermione asked, quite deliberately as she found his reaction funny. He grimaced, opening his eyes again and looking at her with an aggrieved expression.

"Let a man relax for a bit before you go asking things like that, will you, Hermione?" he muttered.

She opened her book and settled back, smiling faintly. "By which you mean, no, you haven't."

Harry snickered when Ron sighed. "I'll do it later."

"Promise?"

"I promise," the red-head grumbled. "You really are a little much, sometimes."

"I'm merely trying to keep my friends from slacking off to the point they cause themselves trouble later," she replied archly, crooking an eyebrow at him. Ron looked back, shaking his head sadly.

"Mad as mutton, you are, sometimes. Were you born in a library or something?"

She grinned at him for a moment, knowing he wasn't really offended. Over the years, the three of them had developed a nice relationship, one she valued. And she knew the other two did as well in their own ways. Harry was her best friend, and in reality her first one, but Ron had ended up very close to her as well, despite some early setbacks. If nothing else he'd finally learned a little tact, which had pleased almost everyone. Harry had learned to stand up for himself, and she herself was honest enough to admit she'd learned how not to show off her knowledge. It had benefited all of them in different ways.

Now if only Ron could learn to chew with his mouth closed…

' _One day,_ ' she thought, smiling to herself. The three of them fell silent, Hermione reading, Harry staring into the fire, and Ron apparently dozing.

"What are you going to do when we finish school?" Harry asked a few minutes later, out of the blue. She raised her eyes from the book again, studying him. Ron opened one eye, then closed it once more, but she could feel him listening.

"What brought that up?" she asked curiously.

"Don't really know," he shrugged, still watching the logs slowly burn to ash. "I guess I've been thinking about things for a while."

"Want to watch that, Harry," Ron grunted. "Thinking about things, I mean. You'll end up as bad as Hermione."

She looked at him, then Harry, who was looking back with a small smile. "Poke him for me, I can't reach," she requested. He did so, resulting in a squawk from Ron, then a snicker.

"What sort of things?" Hermione asked when the two had stopped poking each other.

"Things," her friend repeated, looking thoughtful but slightly puzzled. "I mean… you're the smartest person in the entire school, I'm sure. You can do anything you want. Me, I'm not an idiot, but I know I'm not as smart as you are. I've got loads of power, true enough, and I learn well under pressure, so there's that, but you're still the one who gets it first practically every time. You probably know more spells than half the professors!" He grinned as she looked slightly embarrassed.

"Maybe one or two of them," she demurred, but was aware he wasn't too far wrong in some ways. But then she liked learning things.

"Ron here, he's a lazy git..."

"Oi!"

"You know you are."

"Well..."

Harry snickered, then went on, "...but he's brilliant at tactics, not stupid either even though sometimes you wouldn't realize it..."

"Oi! Again!"

Hermione giggled at the other young man who was looking slightly miffed now.

"…and is also fairly powerful when he can be arsed to put the work in. Even if it takes him twice as long as everyone else to learn some spells."

"Some friends," Ron muttered, giving them both baleful looks. The other two exchanged amused glances then ignored him, knowing he wasn't really insulted. It was nothing they hadn't said before and it was all basically true.

"Nev is at least as powerful in raw magic as I am, Luna is nearly as smart as you are, and so on. But none of us have really talked about jobs. Except Ron, and his plans to dominate the Quiddich world."

"I have so many plans," Ron nodded. "So many." He looked hard at Harry. "You like Quiddich as well, you could easily do it professionally."

Harry shrugged. "It's fun, but I mainly like it for the flying. You know that."

"Hmph." His friend shook his head. "I don't believe you. You look too happy when you win the game."

"Let's not start that argument again," Harry said quickly. "We always end up doing that. I'm trying to be serious for once."

"You can't, he's in London."

Harry groaned. "Oh, god, not you too! That pun is terrible, and it only works in an American accent in the first place. Stop it."

It was Ron's turn to grin, while Hermione laughed.

"How is your lunatic godfather anyway?"

"He's fine, especially now that we finally convinced Dumbledore to stop trying to get me to go back to the damn Dursley's. Sirius pointed out that with all Riddle's followers tits up in a ditch there was no reason for me to ever see them again." Harry frowned for a moment. "Sometimes I really wonder why the Headmaster was so dead-set on me staying with them. I told him enough times that neither I nor they wanted me there, but..." He shrugged, looking mildly puzzled, but quickly ignored the question. "I'm going to stay with him over Christmas, he's spending loads of money on doing up the house for me, no matter what I tell him about how I don't expect anything fancy."

"The man was in prison for something he didn't do for years, Harry, let him have his fun," Hermione suggested. "He loves you, after all."

The boy smiled widely. "He does, doesn't he," he said softly. They were all silent for a few seconds until he shook himself a little. "Stop distracting me. Jobs. It's only a year or so before we're all out of here, released into the wild. What am I going to do? What are _you_ two going to do?"

"What do you _want_ to do?" Hermione asked, giving up on her book and closing it, with her wand marking where she'd got to.

"Dunno," Harry admitted. "I'm not interested in professional Quiddich, no matter what Ron says..." The boy next to him grunted in a slightly disbelieving manner and got an elbow in the ribs for his trouble. "I did think about becoming an Auror, of course, since I have a knack for DADA, but… I'm not sure that's quite right either. I don't trust the ministry further than I can throw it, even with all the changes recently. Susan's aunt is fine, I like her, and there are a few others, but there are also a lot of entitled tossers running the place."

He sighed heavily. "But what else is there? The wizarding world, especially the British one, doesn't have that many sorts of jobs as far as I can see."

"You don't actually _need_ to work, you know," Hermione pointed out. "Your family was pretty wealthy, and Sirius is loaded. You could easily live off that for the rest of your life, especially if you invested some of it in the non-magical world with a little careful thought."

"I know, but I don't really want to sit around on my arse all day for the rest of my life," Harry replied. All three of them fell silent for a while, looking at the fire.

"Travel the world?" Hermione suggested. "You could join forces with Luna. I'm sure she'd love to have you come with her while she looks for things that don't exist."

Harry chuckled. "You know, I'm half-tempted to do that. I like her, and I'm not entirely convinced that all her weird animals are actually made up. Maybe they're just really rare, or possibly recently extinct, like that… what was it..." He thought, then snapped his fingers. "Tasmanian Tiger, that was it. I saw something on TV at the Dursley's about it last year. Some people think there still might be some left, hiding somewhere in Tasmania. People keep looking for them. Maybe Luna's creatures are the magical equivalent?"

Hermione looked at him, somewhat surprised. "That's… possible, I suppose," she admitted. "I didn't think of it like that."

Tapping her head with a finger, Harry smirked. "Think _outside_ the book, Hermione."

"You mean box."

"I know what I mean."

Sighing, she smiled at him, shaking her head. "All right, you made your point. Don't push it."

"What about a dark wizard hunter?" Ron suggested. "Go freelance, sort of thing. They keep popping up all over the place, even I know that. And with he-who-is-as-dead-as-anything out of the picture I'll bet there will be people turning up to fill the gap."

"Merlin, that's a depressing thought, Ron," Harry said after an appalled look. Hermione nodded vehemently. "We only just got rid of the bastard, don't wish someone worse on us!"

"I'm just saying," Ron shrugged. "I know a little history, even with Binns putting everyone to sleep the moment he opens his mouth, and obsessing about goblins. Dad's told us about that sort of thing. They turn up out of nowhere all the time. Riddle sort of took over for a long while, no one else could hold a candle to him after all, but now he's out of the way..."

"Damn it." Harry glared into the fire. "I don't want to go through that again."

"I doubt you'd have to," Hermione soothed him. "Don't panic. Riddle was a special case."

"I certainly hope so," the black-haired young man grumped, folding his arms.

"It's a possible career, though, right?" Ron asked, looking at them both. "I bet it would pay well. And I also think you'd be good at it, you're a lot better than anyone else I know at Defense. A couple of years of hard training, maybe the Auror course, and you could travel around dealing with the people even the Aurors are worried about."

"Why do I think that you're glossing over some very important things there, Ron?" Harry asked with a small smile. Ron shrugged, while Hermione smiled as well.

"Don't know, it seems simple enough to me," the red-head replied.

"A lot of things do, Ron," Hermione giggled. He gave her a hard look while Harry started laughing.

"Thanks, Hermione," the young man responded. "Thanks very much."

"You're welcome," she smiled.

They ended up arguing about homework, the best type of pudding, and whether any of Luna Lovegood's cryptozoological creatures really did exist for the next couple of hours, before they all finally went to bed. However, Hermione kept thinking about the point that Harry had raised for some time after that.

What _did_ she want to do when she finally graduated as a fully trained witch?

One thought kept coming back to her, a memory of an offer made over the summer...

* * *

A little over a month later, that question had migrated to the back of her mind, as she was busy studying hard. Not unusual, she was after all Hermione Granger. It was sort of her thing.

One morning she was sitting down for breakfast with a textbook, as usual, sitting beside her plate, when the mail owls began arriving. Not expecting anything today, she ignored the birds flapping around the place with the ease of long practice, only leaning back a little as Hedwig landed between her plate and Harry's, promptly stealing half the bacon on his plate before letting him have the letter tied to her leg.

The snowy owl sidled over to her plate and eyed a sausage with a contemplative air. "Try it and I'll have roast owl for lunch," Hermione said without looking up. The owl glared at her, made a rude noise, and turned around. Seconds later Ron squawked in outrage, Hedwig made a triumphant sound, and Harry started snickering.

"I was eating that!" Ron shouted.

Hedwig barked insultingly at him, then flew off, with Harry grinning after her, before he turned to his letter. Hermione simply smiled to herself and kept reading, eating one handed.

"Aren't you going to take your mail, Hermione?" Ron asked after a few seconds, having calmed down rapidly. The little skit with Hedwig was a commonplace thing these days, the owl definitely had a sense of humor, albeit a weird one.

"Mail?" she queried, finally looking up. Ron motioned with his fork to the side of her plate.

Turning her head, she stared at the… bird…? that was patiently waiting a couple of feet away. "Funny looking bird," Ron added, inspecting the creature. "What is it, a hawk of some sort?"

Hermione gaped at the feathered thing that was a bit bigger than a crow, with obvious claws sticking out of the last wing joint. Yellow-orange eyes which were far too intelligent looked back at her, somehow seeming amused. She recognized it instantly, although she couldn't believe it.

The creature was standing on a small parcel, about two inches square and an inch thick, which had her name on a tag attached to it. When it was sure it had her attention, it stepped off the paper-wrapped parcel and pushed it towards her with one taloned foot. Numbly, she picked it up and read the label.

' _Hermione Granger, private correspondence. Attempted opening by any other person will have severe consequences. Mail protection by FamTech™ MailGuard®_ '

Blinking in shock, she read it again, then looked at the bird that was now definitely, somehow, smirking at her. It walked over to her plate, grabbed the sausage that Hedwig had been warned off, swallowed it, winked at her, and took off, quickly flying up to the ceiling where it vanished from sight.

The brunette girl followed it with her eyes in a wondering manner.

"What sort of bird _was_ that, any idea?" Harry asked from next to her. She twitched a little, lowering her gaze to meet his, then looking at Ron, then the package she was still holding.

"It wasn't a bird, technically," she said faintly. "It was a flying dinosaur. An archeopteryx. Which is _impossible_ , they died out nearly a hundred and fifty million years ago."

"Looked pretty alive to me," Ron said, peering upwards for a moment. "Hungry, too." He looked back at her. "What's in the parcel, then?"

"I have no idea," she replied. Turning the label over, she saw that there was more writing on it. ' _Open only in a private location._ ' It was followed by the letter S.

The label, coupled with the way it had been delivered, suddenly gave her a shrewd idea who had sent it. _Why_ , on the other hand, was anyone's guess.

After a long moment she slipped it into her pocket. "I'll look at it later," she said, resuming eating her breakfast. "We don't have long before class."

Her friends stared at her, then exchanged a look. It clearly said, ' _It's Hermione, don't bother asking..._ ' They also resumed eating. Very soon, they were heading to Charms and the matter of the odd parcel was dropped for the moment.

None of them noticed Luna staring hard at Hermione, and occasionally glancing upwards with a wondering look in her silver-gray eyes...

* * *

When the day was finally over, dinner had been eaten, and homework completed, Hermione finally allowed herself to think about the small packet in her pocket, which she'd felt bump her leg the entire day. Retiring to her bed with the excuse of being more tired than usual, she pulled the curtains around it, then cast every privacy charm on them she could think of, resulting in something that even Dumbledore would have had trouble getting through.

She knew _a lot_ of privacy charms.

Sitting cross-legged on the bed, she pulled the small parcel out of her pocket and dropped it in front of her, staring at it. After a moment she started casting diagnostics spells on it, just in case.

Ten minutes later she was mightily puzzled. It came up entirely clean, and in fact entirely non-magical, but at the same time she could literally _feel_ something odd about it. If it wasn't magic, what was it?

Eventually she sighed a little, shrugged, and reached for the string holding the paper cover on. Carefully untying it, she folded the paper back and inspected the contents. A small metallic box met her eyes. She picked it up and looked carefully at it, shaking it a little near her ear, then feeling it to work out how it opened. Presuming that it did. As she ran her thumb over one specific place on the top surface, a quiet tone sounded.

 _"Authorized recipient Hermione Jean Granger detected and verified. Please place this device on a clear surface with at least one foot of space available in all directions."_

Letting out a little yip at the totally unexpected, if polite, voice, Hermione fumbled the thing, nearly dropped it, caught it again, then very gently put it on the bed and shuffled back.

 _"Thank you_ ," the thing said. Then it wavered and somehow unfolded in a manner that made her eyes hurt and her stomach twinge for a moment. It was entirely unlike any shrinking spell she'd ever seen before, it was more like the thing had suddenly had more dimensions than it should have done. She couldn't begin to understand how that was achieved even with her encyclopedic knowledge of magic.

The resulting object was a case that was roughly a two foot cube, with a handprint outlined on the top surface, the entire thing made of a very familiar looking gray metallic substance. Something she'd seen before, a few months back, in the form of a small but impossibly heavy wheel.

 _"To open, place hand on sensor. Current configuration dictates that attempted use by non-authorized personnel will be met with sublethal consequences on the first attempt only. Repeat attempts will result in lethal response. No further verbal warnings will be given. Full instructions for use are inside_."

The voice fell silent once again, leaving the girl staring uneasily at the case. She was wondering if it was a good idea to actually even touch it now.

Eventually, after checking yet again for magic, and finding nothing she recognized, she sighed and decided that the person who had taken out the worst Dark Lord in a century and all his minions with a device from a science fiction book wasn't going to be put off by a talking box. Not completely certain that was a valid argument, she reached forward and put her hand into the outline on the lid even so.

The end result was entirely anticlimactic. It merely beeped once and the lid lifted a little, swinging up when she moved her hand out of the way. Curious but cautious she opened it further and peered in, her eyes widening in amazement.

"Oh, my god, it's full of books," she breathed.

There were at least a dozen books visible, the spines towards her. Reaching in she ran her fingers over them, reading the titles with interest.

 ** _ST Pattern Theory, a primer on advanced magical energy manipulation_**

 ** _The Multiverse Explained_**

 ** _The Mathematics of Reality_**

 ** _How to make the Universe cry, a guide to true magic_**

 ** _Energy from Outside_**

There were more, but several of them were in a language she didn't recognize, one of them seemed to be staring at her, and two more kept changing every time she looked away and back.

After a moment's wonder, she noticed that there was an envelope with her name on it taped to the underside of the lid. Peeling it loose, she opened it. Tipping it up over the bed caused a book that was too thick to have fitted inside to slide out, along with a letter. The book was entitled ' _Operations manual, Famtech™ Tot-L-Safe® document storage system._ ' She put that to one side and unfolded the sheet of paper, reading the neatly hand-written text with great interest.

 _Hello, Hermione_

 _We were impressed how well you solved your dark wizard problem. The solution you came up with was elegant and sneaky, which is something we definitely like. As I said at the time, we think you might well be someone we should be looking at as a future associate of our company, as you obviously have a mind that is capable of handling some unusual applications of magic. Research and Development would be interested in evaluating you._

 _We're aware that you're doing very well in your schooling, for which I'd like to say ' **well done!** ' I would urge you, although I expect it's redundant, to keep up the momentum and ace those exams._

 _After talking things over with Saurial and Metis, as well as some other friends and family, we decided that we'd send you this box of useful books. It covers a number of subjects that I know you will not have come across before, but if you have any interest in work outside the rather limited possibilities of your current culture, will be required._

 _Should you decide that you would be interested in possible work with us, I'd suggest starting with ST Pattern Theory. It's a classic, written by some good friends of ours in a different part of the multiverse, and it elegantly describes some of the most important fundamentals of real magic, the sort of thing that is as far beyond the limited tricks your wizards generally use as their magic is beyond the non-magical inhabitants of your world._

 _The first chapter goes over some basic exercises that are required for this type of magic. It's possible that due to your existing training you may find that it's not compatible with your own magic, in which case we'd have to look into sorting that out. However, Saurial says she's pretty sure you'll find it simple enough to get to grips with. It takes a very specific sort of mind to truly excel at, and from what we've found out about you, you have that sort of mind._

 _If you haven't already discovered it, under the first layer of books are some others. These are various textbooks on mathematics, technology, magitech, languages, and a number of other subjects that you'd find both interesting and useful. None of the books are particularly restricted, at least on most magic-heavy worlds, but you won't find any other copies on yours. There are security spells on them all which will prevent anyone not authorized from reading them, they'll just look like some boring textbook that no one would want to read._

 _I would also suggest reading the manual, very carefully. Saurial is always complaining that no one ever reads the manual! Remember your burner problems…_

 _We'll be in contact again soon. Have a good Christmas, enjoy yourself, and don't get too stressed about your exams. You'll do fine._

 _I have it on good authority that there's a 97.83% chance of that!_

 _Ianthe._

The brunette read the letter again, her eyes wide, then stared at the box for close to ten minutes with an awed expression. Very slowly, a smile spread across her face _._

She reached for the manual and settled back to study it.

* * *

"I think I may have worked out what I want to do after we graduate," Hermione said one evening a few days before the Christmas holiday, looking up from the book she was reading. Harry, who was scribbling a rough draft of the final Transfiguration essay of the year, looked up at her.

"Hmm?" he said absently, before focusing on her face. "Oh." It took a moment to remember that conversation from weeks back. "Good?" She smiled at him, as he looked mildly embarrassed. He'd been miles away, thinking hard about his essay.

"What is it?" he asked a moment later.

"I'm thinking of going into magical research," she said, turning the page of her book.

"That… actually fits you," he grinned. "Unspeakable? I'll bet they'd take you in an instant."

"Something like that," his friend replied. "But probably combined with travel. It could be very interesting, I think."

"Well, whatever you do, I'm sure you'll be good at it," he assured her, entirely truthfully. "I still can't work out the answer to my own question, though."

"You'll figure it out sooner or later, Harry," she replied quietly. "You always do. And you'll be good at it as well."

"Thanks," he smiled. "Hey, Sirius told me to invite you and Ron over for Boxing Day. I think he wants the excuse to have another big meal. He'll probably try to drag you over for New Year's as well, knowing him."

"It sounds fun," she told him, closing the book and putting it down. "I'm up for it."

"Great." He grinned at her. "Now, a question." He held up his draft and showed it to her. "Could you check my spelling?"

Laughing, she took it from him and began reading it, making corrections with the quill she plucked from his fingers.


	4. The Start of Something

Late at night on a Friday near the end of November, ten days or thereabouts after receiving an unexpected delivery via an apparently-not-as-extinct-as-it-should-be archeopteryx, Hermione was sitting on her bed, leaning back against the pillows with the curtains closed and some silencing and privacy charms in place. Her dorm mates had long since fallen asleep, soft breathing and the occasional slight snore coming from them, although she couldn't currently hear this. She turned the page of the book she was reading intently for the third time, feeling the same sensation she'd had many times since she'd first opened it, one of shock, awe, and excitement all rolled into one. The feeling was familiar, but still had the capacity to amaze her even so. "Unbelievable..." she whispered to herself, looking at an illustration that couldn't _possibly_ exist on a flat page, even _with_ magic. It had far too many dimensions to exist even in normal space, yet she was staring at it right now.

When she experimentally poked it with a finger, she gaped as it _changed_ , the bizarre shape she couldn't have described for the life of her, not having the vocabulary if nothing else, warping and flowing around the end of her digit. She spent the next ten minutes playing with it, watching the shapes it produced. They seemed to conform to some specific set of rules, although so far she couldn't quite discern what those were.

Eventually she went back to the text, her head slightly aching and her eyes blurring for a moment as she looked away from the somewhat disturbing image. The image was part of the first practical exercise in the book on ' _Pattern Theor_ y' which was as far as she could tell the most in depth explanation of how magic actually _worked_ that she'd ever seen. It made all her books on arithmancy utterly redundant, and indeed showed that they were largely just detailed instruction manuals on minor edge cases of the overall picture.

It was, she'd decided, the difference between something like being trained how to turn the lights on via a wall switch, and taught in depth how electricity worked from first principals up right the way through into advanced electronics. On the one hand, you learned that if you did a particular thing a specific result occurred but you didn't really know how it came about, merely that it did. On the other, you knew exactly _why_ this result occurred, how to fix it if it didn't, and how to modify it to do other things, or design new ones from scratch. Wizard's spells in most cases, unless the wizard or witch in question ended up in a research field which very few did, were really just following a set of instructions akin to a cake recipe. This book and the methods detailed within were more than that to a level where it was almost funny.

Whoever wrote it was beyond brilliant, in her opinion. She'd never heard of either author but they were so far past anything she'd experienced that she was astounded. The brief preface hadn't expounded much on the writers, merely explaining that this was the end result of years of research and experimentation on advanced magical theory, delving into the underpinnings of how to make the Multiverse look the other way.

This first chapter had gone over the basics, and explained the vocabulary used. It had warned that to make full use of the system would require a decent grounding in some specific mathematical operations, including topology and number theory as well as a few even more esoteric areas. But it also said that much of it could be utilized without a full understanding by intuitive manipulation of the ' _pattern_ ' as it called what she would have thought of as a spell. Further reading showed her that the commonly accepted concept of spells in the magical world were a very crude approximation of what the book was referring to, a whole series of specific workarounds that bypassed a general solution to an entire class of problem.

Aside from anything else, the methods detailed in the book were wildly more energy-efficient, almost nothing being wasted. And, to her astonishment, didn't in any way utilize a wand or any other focus. In fact, the authors seemed to consider the use of such a device as positively detrimental to the true appreciation of magical theory, pointing out that reliance on such techniques almost always ended up making it anywhere from hard to impossible to learn how to do it correctly. There was an entire, quite long appendix dedicated to why this was so, delving deeply into aspects of biology and a number of other fields she hadn't got the faintest idea about. At the end was a suggested further reading list which mentioned half a dozen reference works, all of which she was very pleased to see were in the ' _gift box_ ' she'd received out of the blue from those odd reptiles.

Having skimmed a couple of them, she'd seen that she was going to need to dedicate a couple of years at a minimum to that subject, though, to really understand it. And it would require quite a lot of other research using textbooks she certainly wasn't going to find in the Hogwarts library, although she was sure she could get them from any decent university library in the real world.

That was the most remarkable thing, in fact. The book had told her quite firmly that this method of magical manipulation didn't absolutely _need_ an internal magical ability, although that would certainly help, and could be learned, in theory, by many of what she thought of as ' _mundane_ ' people and the wizards rather insultingly called ' _muggles_.' It cautioned that this didn't essentially mean that _everyone_ could do it, as it also required significant ability to visualize more than three dimensions, and a strong mathematical bent was needed to make the most of it. But it was certainly possible to teach a much larger quantity of people than the vanishingly tiny number who had the specific magical gene or whatever it really was that gave wizards and witches in her world their abilities, to at least some level.

It recommended starting the student off at an early age, as the results were normally better if they began with this method before encountering other magical systems, but it could be learned at any age if one had enough dedication and the right sort of mind. Someone who had spent a lifetime learning another system might well end up functionally unable to learn this one due to subtle changes in the brain caused by their magical use, and indeed might even find it painful to watch the method in use for a number of arcane reasons. There was another appendix detailing ways around this, but having read it she thought it so complex that most adult wizards wouldn't bother even trying. Assuming they could understand it in the first place, which she was pretty sure the bulk of them couldn't. It was right at the limit of what she could understand herself at the moment.

The chapter she was currently reading was the first one in the book which at the end went into practical exercises, this one being a form of test for the reader to allow them to find out if they could perform the necessary mental gymnastics required to use this ' _pattern theory_ ' in practice. The illustration, it turned out, was a visual representation of the required ' _pattern_ ' which was essentially a mental construct that in wizard terms would be referred to as a spell. It was far, far more than that, though.

With growing internal excitement, she carefully read the chapter twice, going over a few key points several times more, until she thought she had a good handle on it. Turning back to the picture, although that wasn't really the right word for the extraordinary thing she was looking at, she tried to get herself into the correct frame of mind. Eventually, after a few deep breathing exercises, she started to follow the instructions, building a copy of the image in her mind, part by part.

It was peculiarly hard. There was a sort of mental resistance to it, like she was trying to think around a corner that she'd never even noticed was there until this point. A headache slowly building, she kept trying, each part of the pattern coming into mental focus little by little. It helped that she had a strong visual component to her imagination, having spent a lot of her childhood picturing the things she read about.

After nearly two hours, she closed her eyes yet again, having found that it helped, checking the weird little image floating in her mind, then opened them and assessing how well it matched the one on the page. ' _Close_ ,' she thought with quiet excitement. ' _Very close. I need to push this bit here over here, then turn this one like this..._ ' The pattern shifted slowly, as she made tiny tweaks, her perfectionist nature insisting that it should be perfect. Finally it seemed to be an exact copy of the one in the book.

Her head now throbbing, Hermione smiled a little. Double-checking her work, she looked at the text for a moment, then nodded to herself. All she had to do now was activate it, and at least in theory she'd find out if she'd done it right.

Suppressing a building excitement, she closed her eyes and mentally prodded the relevant part of the immaterial thing in her head, watching as it abruptly snapped all by itself into a different shape. There was a weird sensation of _something_ happening, not anything she recognized as magic, but definitely real. A sort of tug on her mind in a way she'd never encountered before. Cautiously opening her eyes, she stared, then began grinning like a fool.

The little ball of light hanging in the air a couple of feet away wasn't even as bright as a firefly, but it was _there_. Sure, she could have achieved the same result with an under-powered _Lumos_ spell, but this was done with an entirely different method, one that she was fairly certain a trained wizard wouldn't think was possible. And it was far, far more versatile than _Lumos_. It was a general purpose illumination spell, with dozens of parameters that could be altered to do almost anything with light. She poked the construct she was holding in her mind, watching as the light brightened, then changed color, stretched out into a bar of softly glowing green, then into a blue ring. "Oh, that's amazing," she said very quietly, still grinning widely. "Just unbelievable."

All without a wand. Or a gesture, or a word. It was merely an effort of will. Admittedly, a pretty serious one, she was sweating with the effort, and her headache was horrific, but even through all this she was able to keep it going for nearly ten minutes. Eventually, though, she was forced to stop, slumping back against the headboard as the light winked out of existence. Staring at the top of her bed as she massaged her temples, aching internally in a way that was only partly physical, she moaned to herself.

Even so, she was as pleased as punch, as her father would put it.

She could do it. It was real, the book was right. And if it was right about _that_ …

Almost everything she knew about magic was wrong. Or, more accurately, _incomplete._ Wildly so.

Rolling over and retrieving a small vial from the cupboard at the side of the headboard, she opened it and swallowed the pain relief potion, gagging at the taste even as the headache diminished. She always kept a few on hand, since it wasn't uncommon that her studying left her with a headache. Not normally anywhere near this bad, though. Putting the empty vial back she closed the cupboard, then the book, which she put back into the case which was sitting next to her pillow. Moments later, the case secured, shrunk, and stored safely away, she slid under the covers and closed her eyes having turned off the magical gas light equivalent above her bed.

It was going to take a _lot_ of work to learn the things in those books, but now she was sure she could. And very, very pleased about that.

She went to sleep with a smile on her lips.

* * *

"I'll call you later this week, Harry," Hermione said as she quickly hugged her best friend. "I'm glad Sirius finally got around to getting a phone installed. Owls are fine, especially Hedwig..." She reached out and scratched the head of the snowy owl, who was sitting on his shoulder at the moment, the bird tilting its head into her hand and making a pleased little sound. "But I like to talk to you as well."

"I'll be waiting, Hermione," he replied, looking pleased. "Say hi to your parents for me."

"All right. You and Sirius will have to come to my house as well. But I'll certainly be over for Boxing Day."

"So will I," Ron added, from where he was watching them a yard away, the three forming a stationary island in the middle of the crowd of people scurrying to and fro from the Hogwart's Express, which had arrived in the station a few minutes ago. "Mum asked me to ask you to remember to come over to the Burrow too, Hermione."

"Of course I'll remember, Ron," she smiled, turning to him and giving him a hug too. "I like your family. Pity you don't have a phone, but we'll manage like we always do."

"Dad would love one, but Mom's against the idea," Ron chuckled. "Oh, well, maybe one day. Things seem to be slowly changing in that regard lately, since the Dark Wanker met his end."

"Met his end. How… literary," Hermione giggled.

"All right, then, carked it?" Ron snickered. "Is that better?"

"It'll do, "she grinned. "Give my best to your parents as well." Glancing at her watch, she added, "Got to dash, Mom and Dad will be waiting and parking at King's Cross is terribly expensive."

"Bye, Hermione," both young men chorused as she waved, then grabbed her lightened trunk and trotted off. Waving back over her shoulder, she passed through the barrier into the mundane side of the station, glancing around for her family. Spotting them sitting at a table outside a cafe across the station, she smiled and headed that way. Twenty minutes later, having had a cup of coffee and a pastry, she and her parents were slowly moving through the London traffic on the way home, both of them asking questions about her recent activities, friends, and plans for the holiday.

At the bottom of her pocket, the tiny form of the gifted library occasionally made itself known as she moved, reminding her over and over that she had far more options now than she'd ever have expected. And an awful lot of very intense reading to do...

* * *

Two and a half months later she had finally managed to make her way through all the books in a language that she could read, several of them more than once. She was slowly becoming quite good at the exercises in the Pattern Theory book, up to around chapter twelve, where it started to get complicated. Bearing in mind that the thing had, despite the apparent inch or so thickness, at least two thousand pages and over a hundred chapters, this was still very early days. It was going to take her quite a while to even get to the point she'd consider herself a novice in this new field, yet already it had opened her eyes to a whole series of insights into how her own wanded magic worked and how to make it work better. The wand was quicker and easier, as the book had said, which went some way towards explaining why wizards and witches used the things.

Wandless magic was, if you tried to do the same spells as the normal ones you'd use a wand for, quite hard. In fact, for most spells, it was implausibly hard, for the bulk of people at least. It required a lot of power as it was very inefficient without the wand to focus and guide the spell, which explained why so few wizards ever managed to do more than a small number of fairly simple spells at all competently in such a manner. Harry was better than most, partly due to the way he just kept trying until he managed it, and partly because he had power to burn anyway. She herself could do a few things without a wand but nothing like what he could, or Neville for that matter, who again had a lot of available magic, far more than most people.

But that was using wizard magic.

She was almost certain that with this new type, she had a _lot_ less in the way of theoretical limits. It wasn't tied so directly to the individual's own internal power, worked in an entirely different manner, and was _much_ more effective at making full use of the power you put into it. It definitely required a completely different mindset to use properly than traditional magic did, but if you could master that…? All sorts of things became possible. At least on paper.

After much thought, and reading some of the external references she'd found listed, all of which were available from a couple of academic bookshops in London, she was beginning to believe that she could see a possible way to link the pattern theory of magic into the wanded magic, in a rather roundabout manner. That had some interesting ramifications. The book did mention this, she'd eventually discovered, but not in quite those words.

Some of the other books went into more details on magical focii, including wands, as well as a whole series of other devices many of which she'd never even considered. One of them referenced a field it termed Magitech, which was a hybrid of magic and technology, something that normal wizards mostly didn't seem to think was possible. It also showed several ways that magical energy could be stored for future use, and even linked into a fixed spell to make the entire thing almost like a battery-powered device. You could just turn it on or off, even without _any_ magical ability of your own. The possibilities of _that_ made her eyes widen and her mind race when she read it.

However, one other thing had become clear to her as she'd devoured the information that had landed in her lap. This, as amazing as it was, was only the beginning. There were _decades_ worth of learning just in the literature she had in her possession, which seemed to come from at least a dozen different worlds as far as she could tell. For some of the books she was going to have to learn an entirely different language to even read them, one that she was entirely certain was absolutely nothing to do with any human world. Helpfully, there were a couple of English to whatever the hell it was dictionaries in the library box, as well as a several thousand page book on the language itself, but teaching herself enough of it to actually read the references was going to take a considerable time. Speaking it was probably almost impossible, even with a tutor, since she was fairly sure that some of the required sounds couldn't be made, _or_ heard, by a human.

Every time she thought about what she had on her hands, she found herself wondering yet again who these people really were, and why they'd given her this opportunity. Not to mention being incredibly grateful that they _had_.

It was the best gift that she'd ever received, bar none.

Hermione finally had to put the new books away to concentrate fully on her NEWT studies, although when she somewhat reluctantly went back to what she now thought of as a poor imitation of the real thing, she discovered that her extra-curricular work had given her a large number of insights into the normal work. She kept finding new ways to think about what she was trying to do, which had the effect that she found a number of the more tricky spells much easier to perform than they should have been. It didn't make them trivial, and didn't work with all of them by any means, but it gave her an edge she was very impressed with.

The studies into Pattern Theory and some of the other subjects the books contained also seemed to stand her in good stead with Ancient Runes and Arithmancy. The latter was almost childishly simple for the most part, compared to the intricate multidimensional arrays she was becoming used to manipulating in her head. Her forays in some advanced math techniques using reference books from the real world also aided her considerably. It had dawned on her that the ' _Muggles_ ' knew a _lot_ more about mathematics than the wizards did, not that the magical world would probably believe that.

Overall, then, even though she'd slightly slacked off on her proper work to study this amazing new field, it hadn't caused her any real problems. Quite the opposite in some cases. Potions was about the only field that the books she'd been gifted didn't improve, and even there she had a suspicion that further study might lead to some interesting results. However, it was so complex that it was very unlikely that she could make any use of it for years, so she just went with the traditional methods as they did work well. It was a pity that Snape wasn't very good at passing on his encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, even though since a certain day when she'd… volunteered… him for a particular project, he'd definitely mellowed. Not much, he was still a sarcastic and grumpy bastard, but he didn't seem to go out of his way to be a total shit these days.

' _Who knew that removing his Dark Mark would have such an effect?_ ' Hermione mused with a small smirk. Not that he had the faintest idea who did it or how it had been done, of course, and it certainly wasn't something she was ever going to let him know about. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Finishing her current assignment with a few more lines from her quill, she put the thing down on the library table next to her, then blew gently on the ink to dry it. Quickly re-reading the essay to check for errors, she was eventually satisfied, rolling it up and putting it in her bag. The quill and stoppered ink-pot joined it. Standing, she picked up the four books she'd been referring to and wandered back into the stacks to re-shelve them herself, feeling it polite not to leave this to the librarian. This was one of the reasons that she got on unusually well with the irascible old woman.

When she'd finished, she headed out of the library, intending to drop the assignment off with Professor Flitwick then go back to her room for a rest, and some more revision. It was early on Saturday but since it was currently pouring with rain, she didn't feel like heading out to Hogsmeade like a number of the other students had done.

On the way out she smiled at Luna, who was sitting at another table, surrounded by books, which as far as she could make out were on magical creatures. This didn't surprise her at all, the blonde girl spent a _lot_ of time reading such books. Usually giggling a little and mumbling about how they'd got something or other wrong, which seemed to amuse her.

Luna looked up at her, returning the smile, although there was an unusually intense look in her eyes as she watched the other girl leave the room. When she'd disappeared around the doorway, Luna went back to her book, examining the picture in it, then comparing it to a hand-drawn image on a scrap of parchment. The image showed a medium-sized birdlike creature that definitely wasn't the thing in the book, although it had some similarities.

Shaking her head slowly, she kept looking, determined to work out exactly _what_ had delivered mail one morning months ago.

And then flown up into the rafters of the hall and simply, silently and without fanfare, blinked out of existence…

Turning pages, she smiled faintly. She liked a challenge.

* * *

"Help!"

"It's not that hard, Ron."

"Easy for you to say, Hermione," the red-head sighed, dropping his head back onto the top of the sofa he was sitting in and letting the quill in his hand droop while he closed his eyes. "I can't work this out at all. I hate Transfiguration sometimes."

Hermione twitched the piece of parchment he was holding in his other hand out of his grasp, then read it. "It's not… bad..." she said a little doubtfully. He opened one eye and rolled it towards her, grimacing at her tone. "Just a little… not quite right?"

"So where did I go wrong?" he asked with a tired sigh. Harry, who was sitting in a chair nearby listening quietly as he did his own revision, watched with him as the girl started unrolling the four foot long scroll of parchment, reading it backwards. Both of them waited as she kept going, Ron's face steadily falling, until she pointed at a line about four inches down from the start.

"Oh, bugger it," he muttered, while Hermione shrugged apologetically. "Right at the start, you mean."

"You made an assumption which wasn't entirely valid," she explained. "Then extrapolated from it. Your work is internally consistent, if that helps. Just… not quite correct."

"Damn. Now I have to start all over again." He sighed heavily as he accepted the parchment back.

"It's not that bad. Look, if you correct this part here..." she leaned over and scratched out a few words, inking in some new ones in a couple of places, "...the rest of it down to here is fine. A little change here, and here, and down there, redo those sections to match, and it'll work." She gave his quill back, smiling at him. "Just think of it as a first draft."

"I was _hoping_ it was a final one," he groaned, examining her corrections. "You know I don't write very fast."

"You'll get there," she assured him with a small smile. "You usually do these days." As he looked slightly happier, she went back to her own work, which she was using a mundane pad and pen for. He watched as she wrote out a long line of symbols he couldn't make anything at all of.

"What on earth is that?" he asked curiously.

"Hmm?" She looked up, then down at the page again. "Oh. A project of my own, related to what I'm considering doing after graduating. Sort of… magical research, like I said, but a little unusual compared to the normal sort of thing."

Harry leaned forward to see her pad more clearly as she flipped back a couple of pages, checking her work so far, then resumed writing. "That looks complicated," he commented with a slightly awed tone to his voice. "Way past anything we learned."

She smiled again without looking up. "It's not a field we get taught here. I'm doing independent reading."

"On top of revising for the NEWTs as well? Merlin, Hermione, you need to slow down. Your brain must be full by now," Ron snorted, grinning. She glanced at him and giggled a little, before putting her pen down and flexing her hand.

"I've got lots of room in here yet," she replied. "And this is so fascinating. It's hard to stop thinking about it, but I suppose I need to get back to revising. The first exam is only a month away."

"Don't remind me," he sighed, looking at his aborted work. "I'll never pass at this rate."

"You'll do fine," she assured him.

"Not as well as you will," Harry chuckled, Ron nodding vigorously. "You're probably going to break every record on exams at this rate."

Hermione grinned at him. "I'm definitely going to try," she assured him. Glancing at her watch, she added, "Lunch soon. I'm going to put this away, I'll meet you down in the hall."

"All right," Harry nodded, as he and Ron got up. They left the common room as she went up the stairs to her dorm, carrying her books and notepad. A few minutes later, having washed her hands and put everything away, she was heading down to the Great Hall for something to eat. A familiar figure joined her as she was descending a flight of stairs. Looking sideways, she smiled.

"Hello, Luna," she said. "I haven't seen much of you for days."

"I've been very busy, Hermione," the younger girl said in her typically light and slightly absent-minded voice. "Looking things up, you see."

"Things?"

"Oh, yes," the blonde nodded. "Things. Things are important, don't you think?"

She seemed to be watching Hermione out of the corner of her eye. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, they headed down a corridor past various pictures and suits of armor.

"I would agree that some things are important, Luna," Hermione smiled. "Not all things, though. By the way, what things are we talking about?"

"Oh, just things," the girl said, waving a hand in a slightly dismissive way. "You know."

She fell silent, casting glances at her companion as they walked, her face showing nothing but her eyes oddly alert.

"Do you think you'll do well in your NEWTs?" Hermione asked as they went down the next set of stairs.

"I believe I will," Luna said quietly. "But I won't do as well as you will." Reaching the door to the hall, she stopped for a moment, causing Hermione to pause as well. "You will do very well indeed, I think," the blonde added calmly. "Your job will take you to some places I would like to visit one day too. Say hello to the lizards for me when you see them."

Hermione watched with a sense of bemusement as the odd girl smiled widely for a moment, then made her way to the Ravenclaw table, wondering what that statement meant, and what the girl actually knew. Eventually she shook her head slightly and walked over to her normal place at the Griffindor table. Luna was hard to understand at times, and tended to come out with peculiar statements like that every now and then. It was strangely apposite, though, all things considered.

Near the end of the meal, a few post owls flew in, dropping letters off to various students. Hermione was engaged in talking to Neville about a Charms assignment when he suddenly looked past her at something, his brow furrowing.

"Um, I think you have mail, Hermione," he commented. With an odd premonition of what she'd see, she turned her head.

The archeopteryx standing on the table beside her plate gave her a weirdly knowing look, then carefully put the letter it was holding in its toothed beak on the table. Reaching out, it somehow managed to use the claws on its wing joints to pick up the goblet of juice that was next to it, tipped the entire thing down its beak, belched discreetly as it put it down again, then flew off, not before somehow managing to produce a definite impression of a grin.

Everyone who was watching, which was most of the table, stared after it.

Then looked at her.

Hermione shrugged, smiling weakly, before retrieving the letter and opening it. Reading the contents, her eyes opened steadily wider.

"What is it?" Harry asked curiously from her other side.

"An appointment for a job interview," she replied after a long pause, carefully folding the letter up again and putting it back into the envelope, which went back into her pocket, next to the box of books. She was suppressing a laugh of mixed excitement and terror. "Nothing too exciting. It's after the exams, depending on how I do."

"Brilliant," he grinned. "You'll definitely be going to that, then."

"Hopefully," she nodded, refilling her goblet and trying to act as if an extinct dinosaur stealing her drink was an everyday occurrence. "I suppose time will tell."

Internally she was shaking. Even she didn't know how much was worry and how much was anticipation.

* * *

Luna peered upwards, watching as the strange bird-thing circled the hall once. It looked down at her, winked deliberately, and disappeared.

Smiling to herself, she went back to eating, casting an occasional glance at Hermione, who seemed to be in a funny mood. She hoped the other girl would have fun with her life, since it was going to become very interesting, she suspected.


	5. The Interview, Part 1

"I'll be in touch, Harry," Hermione said with a smile and a small peck on the cheek. Harry raised a hand to his face, smiling back as he felt it.

"Good luck with your job interview," he replied, causing her smile to widen. "Do us proud, all right? I know you can do it, whatever it is."

"Thanks, Harry." The young woman looked pleased. Glancing past him, she chuckled. "Ron's stuck again. Better help him with his trunk." Looking back over his shoulder Harry sighed when he spotted the third member of their group swearing at the large trunk that he had _somehow_ managed to wedge at an angle into the doorway of the train carriage.

"How does he keep _doing_ that?" Harry grumbled, raising his hands in irritation. "Three years in a row. You'd think he'd either learn, or get a smaller trunk. Or remember to shrink it, for Merlin's sake!"

"He likes that one," Hermione laughed. "It was a good find, it's very high quality considering how cheap it was."

"Probably cursed bearing in mind how often he does something like this." Harry watched with slightly raised eyebrows as his friend delivered a vicious kick to his recalcitrant luggage, then yelped in pain and hopped around on one foot inside the carriage, while other people grinned at the show. Leaning on the trunk to inspect his damaged foot, the red-head shouted obscenities when it promptly unstuck itself and tumbled out onto the platform, closely followed by its owner who did much the same.

"Or that," he added dryly, turning back to Hermione, who was visibly attempting not to fall about laughing at their friend's misfortune. Biting the inside of her cheek she watched with bright eyes for a moment as Ron managed to get himself in order, then returned her attention to him.

"I have to dash, but give my best to Sirius when you see him. As soon as I know anything I'll call. Good luck with your NEWT results too."

He nodded, shrugging a little. "I think I'll do all right on them. Not as well as you, of course, but _no one_ does as well as you do. Although Luna might give you a run for your money, and I'll bet Neville gets top marks in herbology."

"That goes without saying," she nodded. Both of them looked over to the young man in question who had just got off the train behind Ron, looking vastly amused at his antics, as did most of the other students and a number of the parents who were waiting. Arthur Weasley was standing to one side shaking his head, a small smile on his face, with Ginny next to him holding a hand over her eyes in despair.

Raising her hand in farewell, Hermione turned around, waving to Neville, Ron, and the two other Weasleys as she walked off towards the portal back into the main train station. He watched her disappear into the wall before picking his own luggage up and following, with a quick smile at Luna who had just got off the next carriage and was looking in his direction. The blonde Ravenclaw waved, smiling back, before busying herself with her belongings which one of the other students was handing down to her.

When Harry emerged into the main station, he looked both ways but couldn't see any sign of his oldest friend, assuming she'd either apparated home or disappeared into one of the cafes. Wondering how her job interview would go, while knowing that she'd most likely do very well whatever it really was, he headed towards the exit, intending to get a bite to eat in a greasy spoon he happened to know was just outside the station.

Then it was back home, to await his own exam results, relax for the summer, and work out what he was going to do now that he as no longer a student but a fully qualified and adult wizard in his own right.

Travel, he thought to himself. That sounded like a good idea. Sirius had some interesting ideas along those lines and perhaps it was time to try some of them...

* * *

Remembering the instructions in her last letter, Hermione slowed as she reached the magical exit, then took a deep breath. Walking two paces forward, she turned sharply to the right and took another step, something she'd never even considered doing before. No one did, they simply walked right through in a straight line. Slightly to her surprise, and much to her relief, there was a sensation of distinctly unusual magic washing over her before she emerged into bright light.

"Right on time, Hermione," a deep voice she hadn't heard in nearly two years said, sounding pleased. Looking to the side, she smiled at the large violet reptile that was grinning at her.

"That's a good trick, Ianthe," she replied, walking over and looking up at the huge creature, who appeared in a good mood. "Would it work for anyone else?"

"Not unless they were keyed to it like you were," Ianthe said, smiling back. "But it seemed somehow appropriate."

Looking back over her shoulder, Hermione inspected the glowing blue energy-lined portal she'd apparently stepped out of, then shook her head in wonder. " _Very_ good trick. Is it magic, technological, or both?"

"Both." Ianthe tapped a control on the device like a large watch band she was wearing on her wrist, nodding in satisfaction when the blue hole in space vanished leaving only a blank wall. "The wormhole needs magic to transfer between worlds like that, it normally only works as a spatial transportation system. The math is fairly complex."

"I'd be interested in seeing it at some point if that's possible."

The large lizard smiled. "I'm not even slightly surprised about that. We'll see what can be arranged. All right, come with me and we'll give you a quick tour of the place, then we can sit down and talk for a while."

Hermione fell into step next to her much larger companion, who was close to two feet taller and probably several times her mass at a minimum. Despite that, she walked remarkably lightly, her toe claws clicking on the ground the only real noise. Looking around, the witch could see a building that reminded her of a small airport terminal, with a long corridor leading away from the medium-sized room where she'd come through the portal or whatever it was. There were doors opening off the corridor at intervals, with a couple of windows showing some sort of control room festooned with incredibly high tech displays that made even a magical equivalent look a little antiquated. A number of people were working at the consoles in there, none of them looking up.

"WCC operations," Ianthe said, indicating the window and the room beyond. "That's where we control the portal equipment and keep track of people in the field. Mostly to other locations in this universe, although we do have a number going to alternates like yours and a few other ones we've found that are interesting. Since there's technically an infinite number of them, we have a lot to choose from."

 _That_ little bit of information laid out all _sorts_ of questions to her active mind. It would at a minimum tend to suggest the many worlds theory of reality was true, and wasn't that fascinating? But she held her questions for later, simply absorbing what she was experiencing.

"The original WCC was much smaller than this, it was only one converted warehouse built for a specific purpose," Ianthe went on as they walked. "We didn't use it all that much for a while, but it gradually became a lot more important, and these days we make use of the entire system and related technologies all over the place." She stopped in front of another window, Hermione standing next to her. The girl looked in at the huge floating display and gaped.

"That's..." she breathed.

"Mars. Yep."

"Good grief."

The huge lizard chuckled. "You'll get a chance to visit if you want."

Feeling a little faint, Hermione could only nod weakly.

"Come on, we're nearly at the exit. You'll like this next bit."

Her guide resumed walking, with her following and looking around at all the doors that _didn't_ have windows next to them and wondering what was behind them.

Shortly thereafter they reached a set of double doors, which slid open silently when Ianthe put her hand on a sensor next to them. On the other side was another similar set, currently closed, like an airlock. "Security point," Ianthe commented as she went through. The doors closed behind them. A voice said something in a weird language unlike anything Hermione had ever heard in her life. The lizard replied, in what seemed to be a code phrase. There was a tone and the other doors opened. "It's all based on our own language, which only people we trust know, and if you get it wrong..."

Ianthe shrugged. "It wouldn't end well, but it would end quickly."

"You take it seriously," Hermione remarked, looking around a little uneasily.

"We have to. Bad things happen if you don't think about security." Her companion waved her forward into what looked like sunlight. Taking the last few steps, Hermione stopped dead and stared.

"Welcome to Brockton Bay, home base of the Family," Ianthe smiled.

"Oh, my..."

She couldn't think how to finish the sentence for some time.

* * *

"So, what do you think? Interested in an internship with BBFO?"

Hermione regarded Ianthe with an evaluating look for several seconds. "You surely know by now that there's only one answer I could possibly give."

The violet creature chuckled. "I could say that we were sorry to lose you, but that sort of joke is more Saurial's field than mine." Hermione smiled slightly. "Good. We've got some documentation for you to look at, it explains the travel arrangements, payment, perks, and so on. There are quite a few perks, believe me. We generally feel it's best with people from other universes to run the internship on a part time basis for the first few years at least, since most of them have other commitments and probably don't want to completely uproot their lives. What we're considering in your case is basically a summer job for the first couple of years, three to four months here, then the rest of the time at home."

"Is that enough for me to properly learn everything?" Hermione asked, a little worried.

"In your case? Definitely, no one thinks that you can't handle it, or we wouldn't have made the offer," the lizard smiled. "Your marks were the highest that your school has recorded for about three hundred years in most of your subjects, and the highest _ever_ in that Arithmancy subject that's a subset of proper Pattern Theory. I suspect that our books might have helped there?"

"I learned more in the last few months of reading than in most of my years at Hogwarts," Hermione laughed. "Merlin knows what I'd have been capable of if I'd started off learning that system."

"You should still be capable of it, I think, it'll just take a little longer," Ianthe replied. "And it's not like you wasted your time there. Your system of magic is a bit odd compared to many we've encountered and we're hoping that will give you some good insights that otherwise might not have happened. Cross-fertilization of systems like that is always useful. Even though Saurial thinks that wanded magic is something of a dead end, even she isn't right all the time. And is honest enough to admit it."

Leaning to the side, Ianthe grabbed a box that Hermione recognized as a similar one to the one she'd received with the original books in. She opened it, and pulled out a folder. "This is the introductory info pack, the contract, and other useful stuff," she said, handing it across the desk she was behind. "Read it very carefully, make notes on anything you don't understand, and I and the others will explain anything you need to know more about. We'll talk again tomorrow when you've had a chance to go through it. When you're happy with everything, we'll move on to the next stage."

With a nod Hermione stood up. "Thanks, Ianthe. This has been more fun than I could ever have expected," she said eagerly.

Ianthe smiled. "Great, I was hoping you'd enjoy it." She spoke to the air. "We're done here for now."

Moments later the door opened, to reveal a very tall young woman who was a good six foot two or so, with long brunette hair in a sort of pony-tail held together with a number of silver bands. She looked at Hermione, then Ianthe, raising an eyebrow. "Taylor Hebert, this is our likely next intern, Hermione Granger. She's from one of those secret magic worlds."

"Ah. Those can be odd." The woman, who looked to be about twenty one or twenty two, smiled warmly at Hermione, who smiled back a little uncertainly. "A witch, then?"

"Just finished my schooling," Hermione nodded.

"Great. Sounds like we got to you in time to teach you how to do magic right, then," the woman, Taylor, grinned. Her grin was very good natured and made Hermione relax.

"Can you show Hermione to her room, Taylor?" Ianthe asked. "I've got to talk to a few other people. Maybe you can answer any questions she has left."

"Sure, no problem," Taylor nodded. "Follow me, Hermione. Do you have any luggage?"

"It's in my pocket, thank you," Hermione responded politely.

"OK. Well, if you need anything, we can provide it," the brunette said. "We're pretty good at that sort of thing. It's this way." She turned and walked out of the room, Hermione's steps faltering slightly when she saw that the girl had a long, strong, and dark scaled reptilian tail behind her. Very similar to what Ianthe had.

She glanced back at Ianthe who was watching her with interest, apparently wanting to see how she reacted. After a moment she hurried after the woman, who had paused to wait for her just down the corridor. It was odd, but compared to huge sapient lizard-folk with the highest tech she'd ever even heard of… Probably not important really.

"How long are you here for?" Taylor asked curiously as they walked.

"Ianthe's letter said to allow up to a week," Hermione replied. "I arranged with my family to have that long, and came here immediately after finishing with school for the last time."

"How does your world work, then?" The woman looked intrigued. "I've come across all sorts of ways that magic-rich worlds do things, and some of them are pretty weird."

"Well, we use wands, and when we turn eleven, we get a letter..." Hermione began. Her companion listened with interest as she led her onward.


	6. The Interview Part 2, the Concludening

_The final part of this two part trip for Hermione..._

* * *

Hermione was feeling very happy right now, and well fed. This place certainly knew how to make visitors welcome.

Lying in bed in the room she'd been assigned, which was in almost every way much nicer than the dormitories at Hogwarts, the witch finished reading her information pack, putting the documents back into order. She picked up the notebook she'd been using to jot down thoughts on, going over the several pages of her neat handwriting. Making a few adjustments, and adding a couple more questions to the bottom to ask her hosts in the morning, she thought back on what had to be one of the weirdest days she'd ever had.

And probably the most exciting. ' _Mom and Dad won't believe this_ ,' she thought, smiling. ' _But I've never wanted to do anything more in my life. This is so incredible… This place, these people. All the things I've seen, it's like it's some sort of science fiction book crossed with the best fantasy novel in the world. Harry and Ron wouldn't believe it._ '

That much was true enough. Half the tech she'd seen in common operation was doing things that made magic look bad, and the rest was probably _using_ magic. Or science so advanced there wasn't much difference. Some of the things she'd been shown were simply ridiculous.

And she so _much_ wanted to be a part of it.

The reptiles were odd looking, and in some ways very scary, but all the ones she'd met were also really nice and obviously really smart too. And the other people… or creatures… or both… She shook her head in wonder. The whole experience was almost unbelievable.

Taylor seemed like a very nice person too. It turned out that she had incredible math skills, able to do things in her head that Hermione would have needed hours with pencil and paper or several minutes with a calculator to pull off, assuming she even could. But at the same time she seemed to think nothing of it, it was merely a helpful skill. Her understanding of Pattern Theory dwarfed Hermione's although she said she didn't think of herself as a witch or anything like that. If anything, she'd call herself an engineer.

They'd talked for quite a long time about this world, and this city. Taylor was a native of the place, having grown up here, and said it had changed a lot when the Family started up a while ago. Hermione wasn't sure how long that was, but considering what she'd seen, it must have been several years at least. Apparently Taylor's father was someone pretty high up in the organization surrounding the entire thing.

She'd been introduced to a number of other interesting people, several of whom also had reptilian tails. This was still puzzling her a little, but she couldn't think of a polite way to ask about it.

And the floating cloak, apparently called ' _Cloak_ ' appropriately enough, that had wandered past at one point and hissed a friendly if eerie greeting was weird even in her terms having lived in the magical world since she was eleven. Taylor simply waved to the thing and kept going.

This was a _very_ strange place…

But one with an awful lot of things to teach her.

Putting the documentation on the small table next to the bed, she turned the light out and rolled onto her side, wondering what the next few days would bring and looking forward to finding out.

* * *

"Wand, hmm?" Saurial regarded her with her head tipped to the side for a moment. Hermione bore the inhuman gaze without flinching, which seemed to spark faint amusement in the reptile. The scaled and feathered head tipped the other way, as if the new vantage would cast more light on the subject. "Why? You've read the relevant literature and you're very definitely much more than intelligent enough to realize that wanded magic is, in almost every way, inferior to doing the job _properly._ "

The young witch thought for a moment, wanting to get her reply both concise and accurate. Her companion waited patiently, not even blinking. "I agree. I've studied this fascinating new field for months, and I could happily do it for decades. I've never been so excited about learning _anything_ except possibly when I originally found out I could do magic in the first place. And you're entirely right, wanded magic, or magic using _any_ focus, isn't as versatile, powerful, or efficient as doing it using pattern theory."

Saurial kept watching her, but nodded slightly, wordlessly encouraging her to continue when she paused. She ordered her thoughts, glad she'd had time to think things through over the last couple of days before she'd had this particular interview. Several of Saurial's family had talked to her about all sorts of subjects, but this particular one was the one she found most fascinating and this specific interviewer was the most important one, as far as she knew. She wanted to make a good impression.

"However..."

"However?"

Hermione smiled a little. "However, it's undeniably easier and quicker, which is of course why the Wizarding world uses them. And it requires little knowledge of magic itself, only a certain minimum inherent power level, to achieve some very impressive results."

"And…?" Saurial leaned forward, looking at her expectantly.

"And, with some practice, I think that pattern theory and wanded magic, my version of it at least, can be combined to form something useful. Not as good as doing it, in your words, ' _properly_ ', but much better than wanded magic alone. More efficient, more flexible, but easier than having to fully understand the complete process. Essentially the pattern can be anchored to the wand, using it to do some of the hard work, and freeing the practitioner to concentrate on the desired results. And I think it would be a useful teaching aid, a stepping stone, on the way to learning pattern theory and related disciplines without having to dive in at the deep end. Not everyone has a mind that can do that."

"No, they don't," the lizard-woman agreed, sitting back again and smiling. "You definitely do, though."

"Thank you."

"Merely the truth. Interesting analysis."

Hermione spun her wand in her fingers, looking at it. "I think I'm right. Some of the books referred to something like this, but not exactly in the terms I'm used to. It would be interesting to see how far it could be taken. I'm sure it still has major limitations but even so, it's something I'd like to experiment with."

Saurial nodded slowly, watching her toy with her wand. After a few seconds, she held out her hand. "May I?"

After a long moment, Hermione held it out to her. The reptilian woman took it carefully, raising it to her eyes and examining it closely, then turned it and looked down the length of it. Then she did something that made Hermione gape, which was to suspend it in thin air in front of her and somehow, she had no idea how, make it basically fall apart into a mass of parts and weird glowing energy fields which orbited around where it had been.

She was totally shocked, yet instantly so fascinated she couldn't even raise an objection to the apparent destruction of the wand she'd had since she was eleven. Saurial reached into the mass of light and felt around, pulling parts of it out and inspecting them, then returning them. "Hmm. Not bad, for a beginner," she muttered thoughtfully, stirring the energies around. Hermione concluded that she was looking at all the intricate spellwork that went into forming a wand in the first place, somehow pulled to pieces and displayed visually. She didn't have even the faintest idea how it was possible, even with her new knowledge of the field, but clearly this didn't stop Saurial from doing it.

"Beginner?" she finally said, a little surprised. "Mr Ollivander's family has been making wands for over two and a half thousand years, according to him."

Saurial glanced at her and grinned, winking. "Like I said. Beginner..."

The girl couldn't work out whether she was joking or not, but if she wasn't… The implications were something of a worry.

"OK, I see," Saurial finally said, making a motion with both hands which made the floating disassembled wand collapse back into its original form with an odd sound that Hermione couldn't even begin to describe. The lizard plucked it out of the air and handed it back. Taking it, Hermione checked it over, then flicked it, making a small light ball form on the end, detach, and bounce across the table between them until it dropped off onto the floor. Saurial watched it with a raised… eyebrow, or whatever it was called in a lizard, then looked back at her with an amused expression.

"Still works."

"Just checking." Hermione smiled when her companion chuckled. "Why did you do that? And for that matter, _how_ did you do that?"

"I was curious to see one up close, and you'll work it out soon enough for yourself so I won't spoil it for you," Saurial promptly replied.

"Very helpful," she couldn't stop herself saying in a wry voice.

"I try." The lizard-woman didn't seem offended, more amused than anything. "OK. The biggest problem I can see with using some of the more advanced parts of real magic with that thing is it won't handle the power for long. It leaks a lot, and if you try pushing enough external energy through it to do something interesting it's going to fail fairly quickly. And probably pretty loudly. That's one of the problems with wands, they have hard upper limits on power handling in several places." Saurial flicked a finger at the wand Hermione was still holding in her hand.

"The biological core of that thing isn't capable of conducting much power, and more than that it's not very good at conducting the power it _can_ handle without suppressing a lot of the really fine detail you'd need. That's a byproduct of the way it's designed, but is probably seen as beneficial by a wand maker from your world, assuming they even realize it's happening, because it evens out the power flow from the user. Like a built in low pass filter. Most wizards wouldn't _want_ all the little fluctuations coming through, because they don't have the control needed to make those fluctuations useful rather than just be interference to what they're trying to do."

"I… think I understand," Hermione said after thinking it through. She sagged slightly. "So my idea won't work."

"I didn't say _that_ , did I?" Saurial smiled. "All you need is a better wand, one more designed for the job you want to do. That's easy enough to sort out."

She grinned when the girl looked surprised, then thoughtful. "Assuming you want it, of course. And the job."

Slowly, a brilliant smile spread across Hermione's face. "You mean…?"

"If you want it, _we_ want _you_. Everyone is very impressed with your abilities, your mind is absolutely first rate, you have a very good work ethic, and your history shows you can think outside the box when necessary. That's a useful thing in my view."

Hermione snickered a little. "My friends would have been surprised about that last part a few years back, I'm afraid. I had something of a reputation for sticking to the rules."

"People change as they mature, and from what our tests and information show, you definitely got past that particular issue," Saurial chuckled. "Your solution to your evil wizard problem was inspired. Not to mention very effective and very ruthless. Sometimes that's important. So is the ability to listen to advice, which you seem to have."

"Again, I didn't always have it," she sighed ruefully.

Saurial shrugged. "Most people don't when they're kids. Hopefully they grow up. Not everyone does, and not all at the same rate. From what I can see you did. We all make mistakes at times, no matter who we are or what we can do. I sure have." She looked slightly embarrassed as Hermione smiled. "We don't talk about it."

The witch didn't ask, but she _so_ wanted to…

"Great. We'll have plenty of time to talk more, but let's get the paperwork sorted out first." Saurial produced another copy of the contract, this one with slightly modified language clearing up a few ambiguities that Hermione had commented on. They were mostly down to slightly different linguistic issues, and nothing serious, but the lizards had been polite enough to make the corrections anyway.

She slid it across her desk to her guest, the girl picking it up and leafing through it. "As was discussed, it's a binding non disclosure agreement preventing you discussing Family or BBFO business with outsiders for the duration of your internship. That will ease off in time, but you'll learn a lot of things we don't want getting out to the general public for various reasons. Any company has the same sort of conditions." Hermione nodded as she went over the papers carefully, Saurial looking approvingly at her as she did.

"Terms and conditions for your internship, remuneration, travel facilities, and so on. Nothing too exciting from that standpoint. If you're happy with it, sign where it tells you to. If you want out at any point, we'll arrange it, although I think it would be a shame. I have a feeling you'll fit right in around here."

The girl finished the document, then looked up at Saurial, who was watching her calmly. After a moment, she nodded firmly and put it on the desk, taking the pen that her interviewer offered her. She signed with a flourish, above Saurial's signature, feeling the tingle of some form of magic completing. "Great." The lizard-woman took it back, and did something weird to it that produced a copy which she returned. Hermione accepted it and folded it in half, slipping it into the folder of documents she'd been carrying around with her.

"Now what?" she asked eagerly.

"Now we tell you the _really_ interesting things," Saurial grinned, leaning forward over the desk. "I think you'll like this." She snickered as Hermione stared at her. "Hey, how do you feel about tails?"

* * *

Opening the door of her parent's house, Hermione went inside, then closed it behind her. "I'm back," she called. Her mother popped out of the kitchen, smiling widely, moments later.

"Hermione, Darling! We've missed you. How did things go?"

"Better than I could have ever expected," she said with a massive smile. "I got the job."

"Oh, fantastic! That's wonderful, Hermione! Can you tell us about it?"

"I can't say too much, but it's in magical research and involves a lot of travel," the girl smiled as she followed her mother back into the kitchen. "And some extraordinary people. The opportunities for learning are amazing."

"Where is it?" the older woman asked curiously as she put the kettle on.

"Some distance away, but they provide transport," Hermione replied. "Plus I can apparate now, of course." She frowned slightly. "Although one of the people I met was horrified at the apparation spell. She said it was doing it all wrong and was really dangerous. Then she started muttering in Japanese and looking at me like she was concerned about my sanity. That was a little strange. But she said she'd teach me to do it ' _properly_ ' when I started the job."

Hermione made little finger quotes, smiling a bit. The short and busty Japanese woman had been very interesting, and from what she gathered had a fascinating backstory. She'd said she was sticking around for a while, so the witch was most interested to see what the woman thought ' _proper teleportation_ ' was compared to the ' _hideous risk to sanity and life_ ' that apparently normal apparition counted as.

"It sounds like you'll learn a lot, darling," her mother said, watching her face with an approving look. "And you look so excited! I'm happy for you."

"Thanks, Mum," she replied. "Oh, look at this." She pulled out her new wand, showing it to her mother. It was a much darker wood than her original one, with an extraordinarily complex set of engravings in fine tracery down the length. The entire thing was polished to a silky finish that felt more right in her fingers than any wand she'd ever handled. "It came with the job, custom made so I can test some theories I came up with."

"It's beautiful," her mother commented, inspecting it closely. "These things are some sort of wood with a feather or piece of hair down the middle, aren't they?"

"Usually, yes," Hermione nodded. She'd discussed the concept a couple of times.

"What's this made of, then? I don't recognize the wood at all. Some sort of exotic tree?"

"My new boss said it was a very rare wood called sapient pearwood, with a demon feather as the core," Hermione replied. She grinned at her mother's reaction. "Friendly demon, of course."

"Well, of course, I doubt an _unfriendly_ one would give you a feather," her mother giggled. "I didn't know demons _had_ feathers, actually."

"Neither did I," the girl admitted, laughing. "You learn new things all the time."

"You do indeed." Her mother hugged her. "I'm glad you're back. Drink your tea and tell me more about your trip, I'm eager to hear anything you can tell me. Your father will be home soon, he's missed you too."

They both sat down, Hermione shifting a little sideways on the chair, and began talking.

The next few years were going to be fun, she thought to herself, feeling very pleased with the way things turned out.


	7. PWI Investigates, Part 1

_We see something of the rest of this version of the Wizarding World..._

* * *

"Ron! Down!" Harry shouted the warning to his friend, diving after him as the red-headed man whipped his head around, eyes wide, then launched himself across the foyer of the building they'd just entered in a small town in the middle of Somerset. Both of them sheltered behind a stone column as dozens of horrific spells shot past on either side, smashing into the doorway they'd come from and blowing it, and the door itself, right across the street. The noise was unbelievable.

As more spells chipped away at the column, both of them exchanged a glance.

"Well, I think we found them," Ron quipped, looking somewhat worried.

"Apparently so," Harry agreed, before leaning a little to the side and returning a few shots of his own, the end of his wand barely protruding from the cover they'd found. There was a scream from somewhere up the stairs at the rear of the building and he smiled darkly, before yanking his hand back with alacrity as more spellfire came his way after a brief pause.

"Wards were a good indication, though," he added. "I haven't seen ones like that for years. Blood sacrifice, I'm thinking. That's why it took so long for the ward-cracker to bring them down."

"Bastards," Ron gritted, blindly firing a few _reductos_ with his off hand, then shuffling further away from the edge of the pillar. A massive blast from behind them made the entire area jump and stone fragments bounce around the entire entrance area. Both of them cast the strongest shields they could manage and waited for the shrapnel to stop flying.

"Now what?" Ron asked after it got slightly less noisy, the attackers apparently regrouping. They could hear people shouting outside, and more quietly several voice upstairs and to the rear urgently discussing something. Probably the best way to kill them. "We can't apparate out because they've put up anti-apparation wards, and _they_ can't apparate out because _we_ put up _other_ anti-apparation wards. Same with portkeys. If we make a run for it even _you're_ not going to be able to shield us against… what do you think, eighteen of the sods?"

Harry leaned around the pillar for a brief moment, then retreated, going over the scene in his mind. "Eighteen, yes," he agreed. Then he leaned out again and snapped off a piercing spell. "Seventeen, sorry, I miscounted," he continued as he hastily retreated from the new barrage of spells that followed the scream.

"Nice one. But we can't keep doing that," Ron grinned. While the attackers were firing at Harry's side of the increasingly unstable pillar, he dropped to the floor, rolled out to the left, waved his wand in a complex sequence, then quickly rolled back. There was another yell of pain and agony. "Sixteen, by the way."

There was a momentary lull in the firing, then two more massively powerful _reductos_ came past, one increasing the size of the opening in what used to be the front of the building, and one removing close to a third of the top of the pillar. Stone fell towards them, both of them looking up in panic then as quickly as possible deflecting the fragments heading towards them. Ron received a cut down his cheek from one bit he missed, and Harry winced, biting his tongue to rein in the yell, as a piece the size of a brick bounced off his thigh.

"Fuck, that hurt," he snarled, quickly using his wand to numb and at least partly heal what was going to be a very impressive bruise.

"Good thing it missed your head," Ron commented with black humor. He glanced up again. "This cover won't last much longer."

"No," Harry agreed. He looked around frantically. "Remind me why we decided free-lance dark wizard hunting was a good idea again?"

"Err..." Ron put up another _protego_ as more shrapnel came their way, sweating a little at the effort. "No idea, mate. Seemed like a good idea at the time, maybe? We were getting bored, I think."

"OK, just for the record, bored is better than dead," Harry growled. Ron nodded agreement.

"No argument here. But it doesn't pay as well."

"Money's no good if you're dead," his friend snapped, fumbling in his pockets for something to help. Pulling out one of the experimental sleep gas potions the twins had come up with, he tapped the vial with his wand to activate the timer then banished it towards the nearest wall, the selectively unbreakable glass tube pinging off and disappearing behind them. Two seconds later the spells holding it together collapsed and there was a loud popping sound.

Seconds after that the firing diminished sharply. "Got at least a few of them," he said.

"Doesn't last long, though, and their friends will wake them up," Ron pointed out. "Not to mention they won't get caught like that again."

"Yes, but it gives us some time," Harry replied, poking through his stock of special effects from his friend and partner's brothers. He picked a couple more vials from the collection, holding them up.

Ron paled slightly.

"Oh, _hell_. Not _that_ one."

"Best chance we have. We need to retreat, there are too many of them."

"Fuck. OK, give me the other one," Ron sighed, plucking a tube from him. He placed his wand tip on it and looked at his friend. Harry did the same with his and met his gaze. "On three. Then we run like bastards."

"Fine with me. One..."

"Two…

"THREE!" Simultaneously they activated the vials, shot them back over their heads, and closed their eyes while putting their hands over them.

Another pop sounded, then the world briefly went entirely white. People both inside and outside the large house started screaming and carrying on. "Run, get up, go, _go_ , **_go!_** " Harry yelled, blinking spots from his vision. Even through closed eyes he'd seen the bones in his hands, the light had been so intense. Both of them lurched to their feet and legged it towards the door while the remaining members of the cult randomly fired in every direction. At least one more of them died from a misdirected spell from his own side.

The two men were counting under their breaths even as they ran as fast as they could. Out the door, over the rubble in the street, then charging away from the house at a rate of knots, waving frantically at the handful of people who hadn't already had the foresight to evacuate the area. "RUN!" Ron screamed.

Several panicked faces looked back, most of the people then turning and leaving as quickly as possible too. A small girl of about six was staring at them, the tall red-headed man grabbing her on the way past and ignoring her screech of fright as he didn't even slow down.

"Eight… Nine…." Harry said out loud, his breathing harsh in his ears.

"Ten..." Ron put in, then they exchanged a look. "Over there," he shouted, changing direction and taking them down a small alleyway. Harry followed.

"Fourteen..."

At the mark of fifteen, there was a rumble. It went on for a couple of seconds, stopped, and just as they exchanged a glance, came back with friends.

The entire area vibrated like it was being shaken by a giant. A sound like the biggest organ pipe in existence rolled over them from the direction of the manor house, going on and on for far longer than seemed reasonable. The little blonde girl put her hands over her ears and screamed, then vomited all over Ron, who was looking very green himself even _before_ this little act.

Harry was doing his best to hold in his lunch but could feel his innards squirming around. Moments before he was afraid he was going to have to get new robes, the sound died away.

Complete silence fell.

They looked at each other for a long moment, then Ron glanced down at himself and sighed. Carefully putting the very unwell-appearing little girl down he cleaned himself off with his wand.

"If it was like that out _here_ I almost feel sorry for the sods," he muttered. "Remind me to strangle George. That horrific thing is going too far."

"I should never have let him see that _Mythbusters_ episode," Harry sighed. "He and Fred get _way_ too many ideas from the television these days."

"Thanks for that, by the way. Introducing them to the telly, I mean. Really helped out a lot." Ron looked sourly at him. He couldn't help grinning back, despite lingering intestinal distress.

After a few more seconds, they went to the end of the alley and looked down the street. The manor no longer had any glass in any of the windows, nor did any other building within at least two hundred feet. Glass shards littered the area.

Harry winced. "Oops. We're going to get shouted at for that," he sighed.

"That's what normally happens," his friend nodded wisely. "But at least this time the building is still sta..."

A crunching sound interrupted him as the largest of the three chimneys protruding from the roof of the grand building shuddered, then gracefully tipped over, falling across the slates and vanishing through them. Dust came out the glassless windows of each of the four floors in sequence, accompanied by more and louder crunches and rumbles.

When it was finally silent, a gaping hole left behind where over half the roof had once been, he finished, "...nding." then put his hand over his eyes. "Fuck."

"Might have used a _little_ too much brown note potion," Harry noted evenly. He pulled out a small book and wrote in it for a second. "Better mention that to them."

"I hate you," Ron mumbled under his hand. Harry slapped him on the shoulder in a cheerful manner.

"No, you don't, this is much more exciting than playing some stupid game, isn't it?"

"Ten minutes ago you were complaining that you had no idea why we were doing this, and now you're saying it's _exciting?_ " Ron exclaimed with a moan. "You are a complete lunatic at times, Harry. Make up your bloody mind, will you?"

He lowered his hand and peered at what was left of what had been one of the more expensive and grand, not to mention old, houses in the area. "We're never going to hear the end of this, you realize? The contract was to _find_ the cult, not wipe them out and take out a nationally famous building in the process."

"We found them, didn't we?" Harry smiled. "And each of them had a price on their heads, the entire set was worth nearly a million galleons. Dead or alive."

"And we just did about a million galleons of damage," Ron muttered. "At least. Repairing that lot is going to be a nightmare."

His friend shrugged. "Collateral damage. They started it."

" _You_ get to tell the DMLE that, mate. Me, I'm staying out of it. I wonder if we can blame the cultists?"

"Probably."

"I hate death cults," Ron finally sighed. "Even more than I hate you. Come on, let's see if any of them are still twitching. Then we have to call this in." He looked back and down as the little girl approached and poked him in the back. Kneeling on one leg, he smiled at her. "Are you all right?" he asked solicitously.

She punched him in the eye with a tiny fist, then stomped off grumbling, while Harry fell about laughing like an idiot.

"Ow," Ron finally said, standing up and giving his chortling colleague a dark look. "And that's why I don't want a daughter."

"Need to find a woman who will let you marry her first," Harry snickered, wiping a tear from his eye. Ron was gingerly feeling his injury and wincing. "Only problem with that is they have to _meet_ you before that can occur. We know what happens then."

"Prat." The taller man pointed a sour expression at his friend of fifteen years before grabbing his shoulder and directing him towards the house that was now smoking slightly. "Stop laughing and let's get on with it."

The pair began walking back to inspect the damage and capture any of the terrorists who were still functional, wands out and senses alert. Harry was still grinning to himself even as he was mentally composing the report he was going to have to write.

And carefully spin to put all the blame on the idiots who'd opened fire first...

* * *

"You, Potter, are a complete pain in the arse," the Director of the DMLE growled, leafing through the parchmentwork on the desk. "Ten dead, five _nearly_ dead, the rest injured, twenty-three claims for damage from the locals, a stately home in rubble, two hundred and sixteen mundanes needing memory work, and that's just the _preliminary_ reports."

Harry shrugged mildly. "But we completed the contract. And none of the cultists got away." He glanced at Ron who was sitting in the chair next to him with an expression of one who is hoping he won't get asked any questions. "The collateral damage was fairly minor all things considered. Especially compared to last time."

"Do _not_ mention last time, Potter," the Director snapped. " _We do not talk about last time!_ "

Harry mimed zipping his lips, badly suppressing a small smile. The person on the other side of the desk glared at him for a few seconds, while Ron rubbed his forehead and didn't say anything although he was looking like he wanted to. After a moment, the flipping through sheets of parchment resumed. "I suppose you're claiming it was their fault?"

"They started it," Harry reiterated for the third time. There was another stare accompanied by a sigh.

"Fine. I don't believe you, but fine." The last sheet was signed, then pushed across the desk. Harry picked it up, scanned it, folded it a couple of times, and tucked it away.

"Why don't you believe me?" he asked.

The man behind the desk sighed once more. "Because I went to school with you, Harry. You were as mad as a tree full of fish even then and you're worse now." He looked at Ron, who winced slightly. "You too, Ron, and the less said about your brothers the better. I have a sneaking suspicion that they're involved in this mess somehow as well."

"George and Fred were nowhere near Somerset, Nev," Harry smiled. "Honest, it was just the two of us. We were following a lead, we got lucky, and look at the results! One less Dark Cult at no extra charge!"

Neville fixed him with a hard look. The green-eyed man at least had the grace to blush a little. "No extra charge?" he echoed. "You're lucky I don't have you arrested for… for…" He searched for the right words. "For doing a Harry Potter. Every time! Why we keep hiring you two madmen I have no idea."

"Potter-Weasley Investigations is the best in the business, you know that," Harry chuckled. "We always get our man."

"And most of the surroundings, usually," Neville muttered. "Amelia warned me about this. Private contractors are more trouble than they're worth."

"You could always build up the Auror force and then you wouldn't need us," Harry pointed out, getting up to fetch some more tea from the urn to one side of his old friend's office, handing Ron a fresh cup on his return.

"It's not that easy, as you well know, Harry," the shorter but more solidly build man sighed. "Despite her best efforts, the Minister can't just wave her hand and authorize new recruiting at the levels we need. Fudge could have, I suppose, but things are different now. Better generally, there's no question of that, the man was a venal idiot who would have led us into disaster, but these days the Minister needs to be accountable. And that makes expanding the DMLE a political hot potato at best."

"Glad I didn't get involved in politics," Harry noted wisely. Ron nodded, still staying quiet.

"Blame my Gran, I do," Neville sighed. "And you, of course. It's usually your fault, whatever it is."

"Hey, _I_ didn't push you into this job. If anyone did, it was Hermione," Harry objected. "She told you that you were exactly the right sort of person to become a good Auror, and she was right. As usual. Youngest Director in history. We're all proud of you, Nev." He smiled winningly at his old friend. "Minister Bones obviously agreed, considering how fast you ended up on that side of the desk."

Neville leaned his chair back and just stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. "I still blame you." He reached out and picked up another sheet of parchment, inspecting it for a moment, then flicking it across the desk to the other man, who stopped it with a finger before reading it. "Next job, if you're interested. Nasty one, this fellow. Our information is he's trying to do what Riddle nearly did. He may be one of the ones that got away from the Voldemort Cult before whatever happened to them happened. We know there were a few that never took up the Dark Mark at the time but were true believers even so."

"Aldous Margrave," Harry read out loud. "Age sixty nine, suspected necromancer, known pedophile, convicted of assault twice, implicated in three murders… Nice chap."

"Yes. Or rather, no, not at all."

Ron leaned sideways and read the sheet too. "Ghastly sort of bloke. Why is he still on the loose?"

"Mainly because we can't find him," Neville replied. "He's slippery. As soon as he got out of prison the last time, eight years ago, he simply vanished. We started getting rumors of a new Dark Lord on the rise a year ago, but so far they're just rumors, no real facts. But there have been a number of murders that had a ritualistic component we're almost certain are linked to him. So far we've been able to keep it quiet but that won't last, and you know what the public are like. They'll panic if they think there's yet another one of these idiots running around killing people, same as they always do. The ones that don't want to help the bugger that is."

"Funny how many people there are that always want to join a cult," Ron grumbled. "That's what, seven of them in the last ten years?"

"At least, and that's just in Britain," Neville agreed with a scowl. "They've had another half dozen on the Continent in the last five years alone."

"We've had a couple of inquiries from the French about helping them out," Harry told him, which made him wince.

" _Please_ try not to start a war between France and Britain, Harry," the other man begged. "Probably best to turn them down. You two have a… special… way with your investigations that I'm not sure would help international relations even a tiny bit."

"That thing with Bulgaria was a complete accident," Harry said indignantly. "We were there on holiday watching a Quiddich tournament and things just sort of happened."

"Four times in two days?" Neville looked at him suspiciously. Harry shrugged, smiling slightly. Ron looked away guiltily. "Hmmph. Right, fine, I don't really want to know. Just… try not to do it again? Please? For me?"

He got an innocent smile back.

"Ron's right, there's something not quite right with you," the DMLE Director mumbled. "I wish Hermione was back from whatever she does this time of year, she's the only one who can keep you under control."

Harry snickered. "She won't be back for another month or so, it's only July yet," he commented.

"Where _does_ she go?" Neville asked curiously. "She's your best friend, if anyone would know you would."

Harry shrugged slightly helplessly. He remembered a very worrying conversation he'd had with the woman some years back, but it wasn't anything he could ever mention to anyone else for a number of reasons. Not that it answered the question in any case. "I honestly don't know," he replied. "Six months of the year, she just vanishes. Some sort of research job is all I know about it. She's the smartest person I've ever met, so I could believe almost anything. Maybe she's working for the Unspeakables? Or… I don't know, knowing her she might even be working for MI6 or the CIA or something. I wouldn't put it past her. But she won't say a word about what she does, where she goes, or why. I've learned not to ask."

"That's very strange," Neville mused. "I know that the Minister has tried to get her to come and work for the Ministry several times but she's always turned it down. I doubt she's an Unspeakable, but I suppose some private research company is possible. Oh, well, maybe one day she'll tell us." He waved at the sheet still in Harry's hand. "Do you want to accept this job?"

Harry looked at Ron, then at the sheet. Meeting his partner's eyes again, he nodded. "I think we do. Right, Ron?"

"May as well," the red-head said, finishing his tea and putting the cup on the desk. "The bounty is impressively large. PWI needs the work." He looked hard at his friend. "But this time we don't just run into the building, right? We _investigate,_ we don't _assault_."

"You've changed, Ron," Harry complained. "What happened to the boy I grew up with who was up for anything?"

"He nearly died half a dozen times because his best friend is a bloody nutter who tends to jump out of the frying pan while screaming ' _Follow me, the fire's this way!_ '" Ron groused. "And somehow manages to persuade people around him to actually _follow_ him. Somehow. No more, get it? We play it safe this time."

With a smirk of amusement, Harry inspected him for a moment, then turned back to Neville who was smiling a little. "We accept the contract."

"Try not to blow up another manor house this time," the Director requested as he watched them both sign the document, then hand it back. He countersigned, filed it with a tap of his wand, then pushed a thick envelope across the desk. "Usual information pack, everything we have on this bastard. It's not much to go on but somehow you two usually manage. Good luck. And please, _please_ , don't let this hit the papers again." He looked plaintively at the other two. "Be discreet and careful."

Harry stood up, nodding happily. "Just like we always are," he replied, causing Neville to sigh faintly. "You can trust us."

"Oh, hell," the other man muttered as they left. " _Why_ do I keep doing this to myself?"

"Because we're the best, Nev!" Harry called back as the door closed. Left alone in his office the DMLE Director examined the reports on his desk, rubbing his brow tiredly at the damage estimates, then decided to go for lunch before he got too stressed.

Sometimes he really wondered why he'd accepted this job. Those were generally the times when his old school friends were out there causing chaos.

In other words, almost every day.

* * *

"Grim." Harry inspected the remains clinically, while Ron ran some diagnostic spells on them. A couple were ones that Hermione had taught them, and he suspected based on the fact that he'd never seen anyone else use, had quite probably invented. "Poor girl."

"Dead for forty-nine hours, this says," Ron replied, straightening up and frowning down at the withered husk of what had been a young woman of about sixteen. "Non-magical, she was sacrificed for some sort of ritual as far as I can tell."

"That's the third one in the last week," Harry sighed. "And two the week before that, another one each of the previous weeks. It's picking up by the looks of it."

"Seems so," his friend agreed with a shake of his head. "Same ritual each time, but no one seems to know what it is or what it's for. Damn, I wish Hermione was here, she'd probably have at least _some_ idea about this."

"She does know an awful lot of pretty disturbing things," Harry agreed quietly, making some notes on their results, then putting his ordinary mundane pen and notebook away. "If she ever went Dark we'd be fucked."

"She's about the last person I can think of that would do that," Ron noted. Both of them started carefully scanning the entire area for more clues. They'd found the body, or what was left of it, drained of blood and showing more than enough signs of torture to show that the girl hadn't died easily, in an old factory to the west of Hull. "She hates death cults with a passion. Sure, she's got more than enough ability to do some terrible things, and she can be ruthless like no-one else I know, but she's a good person."

"One of the best," Harry nodded, smiling slightly despite their unpleasant job. "I'm just saying that if she wasn't, we'd have a lot of trouble dealing with her."

"Oh, fair enough, Harry," Ron chuckled. "I agree, for what it's worth. If she went Dark we'd _definitely_ be completely fucked." They shared a small grin, then kept looking. "She should be back in a few days, you could ask her advice."

"Might do that if we can't figure this out," Harry snorted. "This bugger is a lot sneakier than the last one, and I have a horrible feeling is a lot smarter too." He stopped, peering at the ground, then bent down. Waving his wand he watched as a small cluster of glittering shards of glass, shining in the evening sun coming in through the broken windows, collected together in the air a foot off the ground. "Got some sort of vial here, smashed on the ground. Might have contained some potion we can trace, I can see some smears on the fragments."

Ron looked over as Harry carefully levitated the fragments into a plastic bag he pulled from his coat pocket, then cast a stasis spell over it before putting it away. "We'll see if the twins have any idea before we take it to the DMLE."

They scoured the entire area, taking photos of the ritual circle and the symbols traced out in some foul mix of blood and something else inside it, the small crumpled corpse of the girl in the middle. Eventually they finished, having found a few small items of interest but nothing that jumped out as critical. A couple of popping sounds from outside made them look around to see a pair of familiar people walk in cautiously, wands ready.

"Tonks, Colin, you two took your time," Harry said in greeting, lifting a hand and waving the pair over. "Watch out, there's some evidence on the floor about six feet in front of you to the right."

Both Aurors looked to where he was pointing then altered course a little, shortly joining Harry and Ron next to the circle and human remains. "Morgana, that stinks," Tonks muttered.

"Bodies tend to in this heat after a couple of days," Ron said sourly.

"Sorry about the delay, boys, we had a nasty assault to deal with in Manchester," the somewhat older woman said, looking away from the body to them. Her hair was a more subdued color than normal, a deep red rather than her favorite pink. It showed she was stressed and tired. "Third one in two days."

"Catch them?" Harry asked. She nodded, looking momentarily satisfied.

"Yeah, we did. Took both down after a lot of running around. They'll live, but they're not going to enjoy it."

"Good."

"So what do we have here?" Tonks asked, looking around. "Ritual circle, extremely dead girl..." Harry held up the transparent bag and she examined it. "Broken potion vial. Looks like some particularly Dark ritual to me, definitely."

"You can practically feel it," Colin noted uneasily. "She didn't die quickly."

"No, she didn't," his partner sighed. Very carefully she stepped around the detritus on the floor, her normal clumsiness completely suppressed when she was concentrating on her work like this, and moved closer to the body. She waved her wand in complex patterns, testing the scene with her own diagnostics spells. "Damn it. Exactly the same as the previous ones. Definitely the same people."

"And we still have no idea what their specific goal is, or where they're based," Ron grumbled. "But it can't be good even in death cult terms. They're doing _something_ with all that blood sacrifice energy and that sort of thing never ends well."

"Nope." Tonks reached the edge of the circle and squatted down, peering at it closely. She poked the neatly drawn and completely unfamiliar runic symbols with the end of her wand and flinched back. "Oh, Merlin, that's _horrible_."

"I have no idea what the ritual is, either," Harry pointed out. "Nor does anyone else. My guess is that either it's something brand new, or..."

"Or it's something very old," a familiar voice said from behind them, making all four people jump then turn.

"Hermione?!" Harry controlled his voice with difficulty, trying to stay professional, but his broad smile gave away his feeling. The brunette smiled back.

"Hello, Harry. Ron, Tonks, Colin, it's been a while."

"What are you doing here, Hermione?" Tonks asked, looking puzzled but pleased. "I didn't think you were going to get back from your super secret mission of super secrecy for another week or so."

The woman gracefully wove her way through the rubbish littering the floor, stopping beside Harry. "I had to come home for a couple of days for something I needed, and heard about this new death cult," she explained. "I thought I'd come and take a look, just in case I could help."

"Damn glad you're here, Hermione," Ron said, moving to hug her. She returned it, then did the same to Harry. "We're stumped. If anyone would know, it's you, though. Got any bright ideas?"

"Fill me in on the situation," she replied. All four of them took turns explaining the recent events that had led them here following a trail of desecrated corpses. She listened closely, her face neutral, then nodded when Harry wound up the explanation.

"We used a tracing spell when we found out about this poor girl, since she fitted the profile perfectly, and managed to track her here," he said, waving at the tiny body on the floor. "Unfortunately we were two days late."

"I see," she replied after a pause for thought. "Nasty. Very nasty."

"It's one of the worst things I've seen since Riddle's day," Tonks said. "Might actually _be_ worse since we have very little information about these people. Riddle wasn't subtle, really, marking all his followers like he did. But as far as we can tell there must be at least a couple of dozen in this cult minimum, and we have no idea at all about who any of them are other than their leader."

"And we can't find the arsehole," Ron finished for her. She nodded soberly.

"Do you mind if I have a look?" Hermione said, nodding at the circle and the body. Harry glanced at Tonks, who was technically the one with the authority here. She shook her head.

"Go ahead, at this point we'd all be grateful for the insight if you can come up with something," the woman said, stepping to the side and stumbling slightly as she did so. Hermione's hand snaked out like a shot and grabbed her shoulder, stopping her tripping over. "Thanks. Good catch." Tonks seemed slightly embarrassed but smiled even so.

"You're welcome."

"It's worse up close, Hermione," Harry warned as his best friend headed towards the circle on the floor.

"Thank you, Harry, but I can deal with it," she said over her shoulder, not looking back. Reaching the same place that Tonks had earlier, and Harry and Ron before her, she did much the same thing they'd done and squatted down, a wand in her hand. Harry was as usual impressed since it had appeared there from some sort of hidden holder without any visible action on her part. He was always intrigued watching his friend at work, she'd learned an awful lot since school and even there had been so far ahead of the curve she'd left the rest of them in the dust. Whatever it was she got up to when she disappeared, she was clearly still learning.

The wand was the one she used these days, something that apparently she'd acquired the first time she'd gone away for the summer. When she was home, she normally used her old school one, as he still did, but appeared to prefer this newer one for delicate work although she was fairly uncommunicative as to why. Only that it was in some manner ' _better_.'

"That's an unusual wand," Colin noted, watching with interest. The brunette looked back over her shoulder for a moment, then went back to work, smiling a little.

"It's a customized one I got years ago," she remarked, moving the thing slowly sideways across the floor in an unusual hold. It was glowing faintly and the ground under it was doing the same, small sparks of light coming and going.

"What wood is it made of?" he persisted.

"An extremely rare one," she replied, studying the results of whatever spell that had been. None of them recognized it. "Interesting." Poking the remains of the circle with the tip, she nodded. "Not good, but interesting." Standing smoothly, she did something that none of them saw and the entire circle flashed blue-green and then went dark. A perceptible changes swept through the old building, the oppressive air lightening considerably.

"What did you do?" Tonks asked, looking around alertly.

"Dismantled the remaining spells," Hermione said, looking back at them. "There was a very low level aversion spell, enough to keep mundanes away, and another one that was absorbing the last traces of life energy from the victim. Probably the one that drained it in the first place, but it had nearly run out of power. It was intact enough to flare up again if someone accidentally triggered it, though, and it would probably have killed anyone inside the circle."

Very deliberately she scuffed her foot through the outline on the floor between two runes while making a small gesture with the hand not holding the wand. A faint pop sounded and there was a momentary smell of something acrid. "It's completely dead now, though."

While they exchanged a glance, she moved into the circle and bent over the body, not reacting at all to the grisly sight or the horrible smell. The four people watched as she waved her wand again, producing a sheet of light in the air with a large number of symbols and numbers on it, which she studied carefully for a few minutes. None of them recognized _that_ spell either, but she was concentrating so hard they didn't dare interrupt.

Eventually she sighed and turned around, the gently glowing symbols fading away. "Her name is Elizabeth Cranwell, fifteen years and four months old. From Aberdeen. She died forty nine hours, fifteen minutes, and six seconds before you first arrived, Harry," she said. "She was tortured first, for over sixteen hours, somewhere in Scotland, probably slightly to the south of Inverness. Then she was brought here and killed."

Tonks was writing all this down, as was Ron. "How do you know?" the red-head asked.

She tilted her head and _looked_ at him. "Honestly, Ron, sometimes I wonder about you."

He chuckled at her expression. "Right. Sorry. Yet another Hermione spell, I suppose?"

"Something along those lines," she smiled. "In any case, the information is accurate. Unfortunately she's been dead too long to get much more data from the body. I could tell you all sorts of things about her blood type, medical history, that sort of thing, but I doubt it will help locate her killers."

"We can easily check the name and city and track her movements now," Harry said. "That's more than we had, it will help a lot."

"Do you have any idea what the ritual is actually _for?_ " Tonks asked.

Hermione's smile faded. "Yes. Unfortunately I do."

"And?"

The woman sighed a little, looking back at the body for a moment, then returning her attention to them. "The spell is an old one, very old indeed. It's based on a Viking ritual for absorbing the power of a slain enemy. Somewhat like the old concept of eating a defeated opponent's heart, but in a manner that actually worked. The original goal would have been to gain strength and physical power from those you took down in battle, but it's been modified to directly absorb the life energy of the victim." She turned to look at the circle again, then around on the floor. "It would require her to be administered a potion made from some very rare ingredients including Unicorn blood. Did you find any empty potion bottles?"

Harry pulled the bag from his pocket and showed it to her. "Only this, along with a few random items of rubbish that might also be related. I think they mostly cleaned up after themselves."

Hermione took the bag and held it up to the light, then opened it and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled a little. "Yes, that's definitely it. I was right."

"So this spell drained the life out of that poor girl into someone else?" Colin, who had been listening quietly for a while, asked. He looked both fascinated and sick.

"That is what the _original_ version would do," Hermione replied with a shake of her head. She walked over to the circle and pointed at it. "You see these runes here, and these other ones over here? They're wrong, if you wanted to do what it was meant to achieve. This changes it, so it's storing the energy in something like a crystal of some sort. Normally a blood sacrifice ritual directly powers a spell as it's cast, but this will allow someone to build up a lot more energy and then use it all at once. And it won't require the same very particular conditions a lot of the Darker rituals tend to need. Those conditions were used to perform _this_ ritual, I suspect, but after the energy is stored it can be released at will."

They were all silent for a while. Eventually Harry said, feeling trepidation, "What spell would require that much energy? They've killed at _least_ ten people we're aware of, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out it was more. Half the time we've practically stumbled over the bodies."

"It's considerably more than that, I'm afraid, Harry," she murmured, still looking at the runes. "The crystal they used was _here_ during the ritual. It left traces that lets me estimate how many lives were sacrificed to it." She raised her eyes to meet his. "It's a minimum of sixty people, a maximum of two hundred and thirty. The traces aren't strong enough to get a better estimate. If I'd been here within a few hours..." She shrugged. "I could probably tell you exactly how many."

"Oh, Merlin's nutsack," Ron whispered, his face pale. "And they're probably all Mugg..." He caught the look on her face and hastily corrected himself to the term she tended to be quite insistent about, to the point that almost everyone who knew her had ended up using it. "I mean, mundanes?"

"Yes," the brunette woman nodded. "As far as I can tell. It's not precisely _magic_ they're collecting, it's _life_. Mundane people have exactly the same amount as magical people do. Whatever they're planning on doing with it, they don't need an overwhelming amount of magical power but they _do_ need a lot of life force. And the only things I can think of that would need that are… very bad indeed."

"Such as?" Hermione looked at Tonks, who had a ballpoint pen poised over a sheet of parchment, something that always mildly amused Harry when he saw it. The proximity of two common things from different cultures was odd. At the moment, though, he was anything but in the mood to be amused.

"Creating a large number of inferi would be one possibility," his friend said after a moment. "There's a spell I've come across that would enable, with the correct resources, someone to more or less instantly kill hundreds of people and raise them as inferi in one operation. With the amount of energy they have, that could be closer to thousands than hundreds. Another possibility is a wide area equivalent to an AK spell. I would put the size at approximately half a mile radius." She paused as they all paled. "There are worse possibilities but I'd prefer not to think about them."

It took quite some time before Harry could speak. He swallowed dryly, then licked his lips. "You're sure about that, Hermione?"

"Unfortunately, yes," she sighed. "The references are extremely rare and it would be very difficult to locate them, but I fear not impossible. Several of the more unpleasant spells aren't even particularly complex, they simply require resources that are hard to obtain. And, of course, a total lack of morals and ethics to perform. I've read about similar things that happened over two thousand years ago, and on smaller scales in the Dark Ages, but luckily the knowledge of this sort of thing is very restricted and tends to disappear for long periods of time."

"By the sound of it, _you_ found it," Tonks pointed out, looking slightly worried as she examined Hermione, who smiled a little.

"Not because I'm planning on becoming the Dark Lady Granger, Tonks," she remarked, sounding momentarily amused. The Auror, apparently relieved, nodded. "I would hardly use such crude methods when there are far better ones in any case."

She smirked a little when they all gaped at her. "I'm joking, calm down. Let's just say that my employers have some rather odd books in their library and we have studied some very esoteric fields."

Harry filed that away as another small clue to what it was she did. Not that it left him any the wiser, but it was interesting. "So where _would_ someone look for this sort of information, if they didn't work for… your employers?" he asked curiously.

She thought for a moment, tapping her lip with a finger. "My best guess would be the Vatican library," she finally replied. He raised an eyebrow, glancing at Ron briefly.

"The _Vatican?_ " he echoed.

"Yes." Hermione nodded. "Trust me, they have one of the largest libraries of magical books and other information on the planet. Far larger than the one at Hogwarts. It's probably larger than the one in the Unspeakable's department in the ministry too." She seemed to think for a moment, then nodded again. "Definitely larger."

"How would you know?" Colin looked puzzled.

She glanced at him with good humor. "Because I've seen both of them, of course." While he was staring at her in shock, she turned back to the others. "I can give you a contact at the Vatican who may be able to help. I'll make some notes and get them to you in a day or two, and tell him you'll be calling, but right now I have to dash, I have something urgent that requires my attention."

As she began walking towards the exit, Ron called, "The _Vatican?_ How… I mean… Don't they hate wizards? And what about the Statute?"

Turning around and walking backwards for a few feet, she smiled at him. "You'd be amazed at how many magical people there have been in the Catholic Church over the centuries, Ron. And don't believe everything we were told in school about why the magical world is trying to hide from the mundane one. A lot of it is wrong. Some of it is so misleading it's not _even_ wrong."

She turned around again, going out the door into the sunlight and turning the corner.

" _Trying_ to hide?" Tonks shouted after her. "What does _that_ mean?"

There was no answer. The four of them exchanges looks, shook their heads, and got on with the business of finishing up, Colin raising his camera and taking photo after photo.


	8. PWI Investigates, Part 2

"Hermione came through with this information," Harry said, plonking a large stack of paperwork on Neville's desk then slumping into one of the chairs in front of it. Ron detoured via the tea urn then joined him in the next chair, handing him a cup without a word. He had a glum expression on his face. The DMLE director looked at the pile, then the two men, his eyebrows up.

"All that? In three days?"

"You know our Hermione, Nev," Harry said after swallowing a mouthful of tea. "This is the sort of thing she's _really_ good at. I don't know anyone else who could have found half that stuff at _all_ , never mind in under a month or two. Or annotated it in the relevant places, cross-referenced it, indexed it, come up with examples of similar crimes in the last thousand years throughout Europe, and added a suggested reading list for further information on aspects of the various topics. Oh, and a glossary too." He shrugged with a small grin. Sometimes his best friend amazed even him. Even after nearly fifteen years of knowing her, and living in the next flat for the last eight of those, he still didn't either fully understand or fully know her.

She was a pretty private individual these days. He sometimes wondered what she'd have been like if those weird lizard-people hadn't wandered in during that whole goblet of fire fiasco and set the cat among the pigeons. The fallout from _that_ little escapade had changed an awful lot of things, in ways that echoed down to the present day. He suspected he had no idea quite how much _had_ been altered as a result, although he also had a suspicion that Hermione did.

He'd never asked. He didn't really want to know, considering how his early years had gone, and how the first three or four years at Hogwart's had been. His ability to end up in the middle of the weirdest adventures with no real effort wasn't something he could see having ended well if it kept escalating like it had been heading for. Even now he still didn't know why he'd gotten involved in half the things he had. Old Dumbledore probably had done, he'd spent several years after that night looking at Harry with a sort of quizzical expression, which had only intensified after the bizarre event where all Riddle's people had ended up dead as doornails, but if so he'd taken the secret to the grave.

Yet another thing to thank Hermione for, Harry mused. Not that either of them ever talked about it after that one night… Although it did sometimes amuse him how the old man would have reacted if he'd learned what had happened and who was responsible. He'd still been researching the event when he died peacefully in his sleep last year.

Shaking his head slightly, he rejoined the present, where Neville was intently reading the top document, a neatly written summary of the rest of the stack. His face was growing more and more disturbed, an expression of horror taking root. When he finished the last page, he looked up at the other two, pale and scared.

"This is… about as not good as anything I've ever heard," he said after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times. He coughed, his throat seeming dry, and tried to add something but didn't have the words. Harry silently handed him his cup of tea, his old friend nodding thanks and taking a large swig before handing it back.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They looked at each other, then the paperwork. "Shit." Neville massaged his temples, looking angry, depressed, and worried. "We _have_ to find these sods and stop them. Even the _least_ terrifying thing in that report scares the life out of me. And everything else is _worse_."

"Did you see the suggestion how it could be used to summon something from the pit and release it into the world?" Ron asked with a dark look. Neville glanced at him, then shuddered.

"Yes, thank you, I did. I prefer not to think about that. Merely contemplating the magical equivalent of a mundane tactical nuclear weapon is bad enough," he replied tartly. Ron almost smiled, but slumped back into his chair with a black expression.

"Maybe they'll only turn a small city into a zombie horde, Nev," Harry said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. "If they pick someplace like Milton Keynes, no one might even notice."

Apparently his attempt wasn't very effective. He busied himself with finishing his tea under the weight of both his friend's glares.

"Again, thank you," Neville grated. "Not quite as helpful as it could be, but points for trying. Please stop trying any more."

"What do we do about it?" Ron asked after a long silence.

They all looked at each other, then at the pile of documentation. "Find them, kill them, burn everything, and salt the ground, would be my favorite idea," the DMLE head said in the end. "I don't care whether you kill them before burning them or the other way around. But before that, we need to _find_ them."

"Have Tonks or Colin found any leads?" Harry asked.

"Not really." Neville sat back in his chair and tapped his fingertips together, thinking. "They traced the family of that last poor girl and at least managed to let them get some closure. But no amount of questioning has produced any real results. No common acquaintances with any of the other victims we've been able to identify, no idea how she ended up in Hull, nothing useful either on the magical or mundane sides. We've liaised with our mundane counterparts, who are putting a lot of effort into tracing what they believe to be a prolific but subtle serial killer. Which is essentially the truth, of course. The ones in the know are feeding everything they find back to us, since the mundanes are a lot better at this sort of thing than we are and have a lot more resources. But so far, nothing we can act on."

"We've talked to everyone we could think of as well," Ron commented. "All the scum we've met over the years, all our informants, you name it. Even had a few volunteer some information, since word seems to have got around about this lot and even the sort of people who live on Knockturn Alley don't much like it. Nothing useful there either."

"Everything we've found is in that," Harry added, nodding at the pile of parchment. "Maybe some of your people will find something we missed, but I sort of doubt it."

"So do I," Neville sighed, reaching out and flipping through the stack for a moment. "You two are irresponsible, dangerous, insane, and generally annoying, but you're good at what you do."

"Only the best, Nev," Harry grinned.

"Pity what you do is mostly be irresponsible, dangerous, and so on," the man behind the desk grumbled, making both of them chuckle. "Life would be much simpler if you could avoid that sort of behavior."

"But much more boring," Harry replied.

Neville fixed him with a hard look. "From my position, Harry, boring is a state I very much wish to achieve. Small chance of that with you two running around, and his brothers aiding and abetting." He flicked a finger at Ron, who appeared amused. "And stop trying to poach Tonks. She's mine."

"We could use her," Harry objected. "Her talents are… exceptional."

"I know. They're mine too. Find your _own_ metamorphmagus."

"Spoilsport."

They shared a mutual smile, then went back to pondering the problem. "I suppose we're at the point where we should probably talk to this bloke Hermione suggested," Harry finally said.

Pulling the report over, Neville opened it and checked a couple of lines in the margin of the first page. "Cardinal Merico Pisani, rare books curator, Vatican Library Department S," he read out loud. Raising his eyes, he stared at his old friend. "The Catholic Church?" he asked doubtfully. "Really? And not just the Church, but the bloody Vatican Library?! Even I've heard rumors about how many weird things that place has, which is only exceeded by the rumors about how difficult it is to get into. Worse than the Department of Mysteries, I'm led to believe."

"From what Hermione told me, that's a pretty close analogy," Harry nodded. "I know it's strange, but she swears this fellow not only knows about magic, and the magical world..."

"She said he probably knew more about the magical world than we did," Ron interjected, looking confused.

"Exactly. And she said he was helpful and very knowledgeable about certain... Rituals. Very _Dark_ rituals."

"Why does that fill me with foreboding?" Neville sighed.

"Common sense and experience, probably," Ron quipped.

"You're just _full_ of helpful one liners today, aren't you, Weasley?" Neville griped. The red-head merely snickered, although he kept quiet. Turning back to Harry, Neville regarded him for a moment, then asked, "So how do we actually contact this man? I somehow doubt we can owl him, and he's probably not on the international Floo network."

Harry put a mobile phone on the desk. Director Longbottom looked at it, then him, his expression puzzled. "That won't work down here. The place is saturated with magic, and has additional anti-electronics wards."

"Hermione told me it would work anywhere," Harry shrugged. "Do _you_ want to assume she's wrong? It's _Hermione Granger_ we're talking about, after all."

"She did tell me once that there was no reason magic should cause problems with technology unless there was something wrong with it," Neville murmured, picking the device up and inspecting it. "Despite all the evidence to the contrary."

"But she also had a radio in her room the last year of Hogwarts that was tuned to Classic FM, remember?" Harry pointed out. "No one could figure out how she did it and she just looked smug when anyone asked."

"She told me she'd mathed it one time," Ron added, shrugging when they both looked at him curiously. "No idea. Maths and me don't get on."

"There's something very strange about that woman," Neville finally sighed. Both his friends nodded soberly. Pressing the power button for a couple of seconds, he released it and waited. Moments later the screen lit with a full color logo. "Draco-Tech Industries," he remarked as the logo faded away, replaced shortly with an animation of a mechanical dragon that flew across the screen, then dissolved into a pale blue background covered in small symbols. "Never heard of them. These mundane tech companies come up with some strange names. Here, you know more about this sort of thing than I do, Harry." He handed the phone across the desk. "It does appear to be working, which is impressive. And a little worrying."

Harry accepted the device and prodded the relevant icon to produce a phone keypad. "OK, let's see… +379 for Vatican city, then the number is..." He mumbled to himself as he poked virtual buttons, faint beeps sounding for each one in a long sequence. "And add the extension code… Right, hopefully he'll be available."

"Don't just blurt everything out, Harry," Neville warned. "We can't break the Statute after all. Let's find out if this chap really does know about everything first."

"Put it on speaker thingy so we can all hear," Ron suggested. With a nod Harry touched the appropriate icon, then put the phone on the desk. All three men leaned forward, listening as the ring tone sounded a few times. Then there was a click, and a man's voice said in a jovial manner, " _Pronto? Il Cardinale Pisani parla._ "

Harry cleared this throat quietly, and said "Hello, my name is Harry Potter, Cardinal Pisani. A friend of mine suggested you might be able to give some advice on a problem I have..."

" _Ah, Signor Potter!_ " the cardinal replied with a very obvious smile in his voice. " _I have been expecting your call. Signorina Granger explained about the unpleasantness your community has been experiencing. My sympathies_."

"Thank you, sir," Harry said, glancing at Ron and Neville, who were listening intently. "Did she explain _all_ about our problem?"

" _She did, Signor Potter. Please bear with me for a short period._ " The line clicked a couple of times, then beeped rapidly for a second more. A message popped up on the phone screen which read ' _Secure line established, encryption active._ ' After a couple of seconds it disappeared. " _Eccellente. We can talk freely now. Yes, Signor Potter, I am fully cognizant of the magical world. May I ask who else is with you?"_

Again, Harry turned to Neville, who sighed and shrugged. "My partner Ron Weasley and Director Longbottom of the British DMLE."

" _Ah. Perfetto. I can be frank with you all. Very good._ " The man still sounded like he was enjoying the talk, his Italian accent noticeable but faint. " _I so seldom manage to discuss these matters outside my domain_."

"Cardinal Pisani, this is Director Longbottom speaking," Neville said, causing his companions to look at him. "Before we begin, can I ask how it is that you, and if what I'm lead to believe is the case, the Catholic Church, _are_ aware of the magical world? We've generally gone to considerable trouble to prevent that exact scenario and I'm curious..."

He was interrupted by a snort of laughter from the other end of the phone. " _Scusa, but I find that rather amusing, Director. Your culture is very secretive, I will agree, but it is hardly perfect at secret keeping. Even hundreds of years ago it wasn't unusual that your obliviators missed the occasional witness. These days… Shall we say that you might be surprised at quite how many organizations around the world are very well informed as to the goings on in the magical cultures. Government ones, us, various others. Most intelligence agencies around the planet maintain entire departments dedicated to keeping track of which particular lunatic wizard or witch is the next major threat to the rest of us. Admittedly you mostly self-police fairly effectively but there have been occasions on which you have definitely… Dropped the ball, I believe is the English expression?_ "

He sounded both mildly annoyed and on the verge of laughter as they exchanged looks of shock. " _Your Thomas Riddle was a particularly problematic individual. By the grace of God events conspired to deal with him, and someone helpfully finished off his followers, may the Lord have mercy on their blackened souls_."

"But..." Neville looked torn between being angry, being shocked, or being stunned rigid. Ron was merely gaping, and Harry was thinking. "If all those people know… Why doesn't the mundane public know? Why doesn't the mundane government step in, when someone like Riddle pops up, for that matter?"

" _Signor Director, the governments of the world have their hands full dealing with entirely mundane lunacy on a world wide basis already,_ " the cardinal chuckled. " _They don't_ ** _want_** _the public to know about the magical version, any more than you do, although for more prosaic reasons. They fear a panic and public unrest. People in large numbers tend to be unpredictable when something new happens. Your paranoia about being unmasked for a number of reasons, not all of which are in fact supported historically from a more neutral viewpoint, plays nicely into their hands. For well over two centuries the various governments have spent a significant amount of effort cleaning up after you when you've missed people. Which happens more and more often these days. Technology is very pervasive and getting better by the day. As our current conversation proves nicely, does it not?_ "

All three men looked at each other. After a moment, he continued, " _And don't think that they aren't prepared to step in if there is no choice. Or that on occasion this hasn't already happened… However, this is straying beyond what we need to discuss. If you wish to talk more about it at some point, please call. I do enjoy a nice chat, it gets quite tiresome here at times no matter how much I like my work. My department is small and necessarily rather cloistered, you understand._ "

"I… see," Neville managed.

" _So. To business. Signorina Granger has, how do you put it, filled me in on the current issue. I agree with her conclusions as to the purpose of this dark ritual, which is an obscenity even in the terms of such things. To take a life in such a manner, and for such a reason… Those responsible will have a special place in Hell waiting for them, I am certain. Based on what she told me, I have done some research of my own, and I have identified the most likely source of the base ritual as being a book titled '_ ** _Concerning Lyfe and Deth, The Rituals Moste Puissante_** _,' written in 1427 AD by one Baron von Roth in Steyr, Austria. Only three copies are known to still exist. Two of them are in front of me at this exact moment._ "

"And the third one?" Harry asked slowly.

" _Was stolen from the non-public and extremely well guarded_ ** _special_** _collection housed in the Library of Congress in the USA nineteen years ago._ " The Cardinal paused meaningfully. " _No traces of a break in were found, although two guards were discovered dead without a mark on them or any signs of what killed them. Interestingly enough, a man associated in certain circles with one Thomas Riddle had been known to be living in the same city at the time, and subsequently vanished overnight with his entire family. Ten years later he was seen several times in the company of Aldous Margrave, a name you will be familiar with_."

There was silence for a while. " _The modifications to the ritual which I have been told about were probably derived from another book, '_ ** _On the Nature of Ritualistic Arithromancy,_** _' by Smythewick Gobbs, in 1829. It isn't considered a Dark work, but is far outside the abilities of most to understand or follow and as such is seldom encountered. I have four copies. Signorina Granger gave me two of them. She was the one who suggested it was a possibility, and she was, yet again, correct. And is one of the very, very few people I have ever encountered who would consider it a beginner's book._ " He laughed slightly. " _That young lady is truly remarkable at the mathematical arts. And most other things she determines she wishes to learn about._ "

"That she is," Harry remarked, nodding to himself. He was extremely curious how she had met this odd man, and when, but didn't want to complicate an already weird situation any more. "The question is, does this get us closer to finding these people before it's too late?"

" _I have taken the liberty to make some discreet inquiries with certain suppliers of exotic literature, Signor Potter,_ " the cardinal replied. " _The name of the former associate of Thomas Riddle is Aubin Devost, a disgraced expatriate minor member of the French nobility. He was known to visit your Lucius Malfoy on occasion, I believe they had some distant relative in common. He hasn't been seen for approximately eighteen months, although his name was recognized by several of my contacts. Two of them with the comment that he owes them a considerable sum of money._ " He chuckled faintly. " _They were quite displeased about that. One of these people was sufficiently displeased he passed on a list of other people in Britain who he believed might be contacts of Devost from past dealings. If you can trace them, they may lead you to him, and if you can find_ ** _him_** _.._."

"He might lead us to Margrave," Ron finished.

" _Esattamente. Yes. I am sorry I can't be of more help, but with luck and God's grace, you may find it enough to aid you._ "

"Thank you, Cardinal Pisani," Neville said after a moment. "You have been a great help."

" _It was my pleasure, my son_ ," the other man said in a good-natured manner. " _I will text you the information I have. Good luck, and God's blessing on you all._ "

"We appreciate everything you've told us," Harry added.

" _Give my best wishes to Signorina Granger when you next see her, and I will consider it time well spent, Signor Potter. And be careful. These people are dangerous and will show you no mercy_."

"We're unfortunately aware of that," he replied with a sigh.

" _Until next time. Addio._ "

The phone beeped and the line went dead. A few seconds later it made a different sound. Picking it up, Harry tapped the relevant icon, reading the screen. He passed it over to Neville, who examined the text. "Never heard of any of these people, but it's worth a try," he said.

"More than we had twenty minutes ago," Ron pointed out, leaning over to snag the phone and scanning the names. "This one here, I think I've heard of. Unpleasant chap, deals in dodgy potion ingredients."

"We'll start with him then." Harry turned to Neville, who was scribbling down the names on a bit of parchment, craning his neck to see the phone, which Ron turned to show him. "Any chance of some Auror backup?"

"I'd love to, Harry, but practically everyone I have is tied up right now. There's a mini crime wave going on at the moment. Must be the hot weather, people go strange in hot weather."

"This is a bit more important than some idiot shoplifting from Harrods with an invisibility cloak or something, Nev," Ron pointed out.

" _I_ know that, and _you_ know that, and even the _Minister_ knows that, but there are still a lot of other ministers who are getting pushy about it." Neville frowned irritably. "Too many thefts from the rich and powerful. So of course their problems become my problems." He tapped his fingers on the desk. "I can let you have Tonks and Colin, and maybe one other person, when and if you find something. If you get real proof, or even better actually track these crazy buggers down, I'll get the entire department to drop everything and go after them, believe me. But until we have a positive target, I'm rather limited in how many people I can pull off other, more high profile, work."

"Mostly because it's mundane people by and large who this cult is killing," Harry muttered under his breath.

Neville sighed and spread his hands. "Yes. Of course. Things have changed in the last decade but not so much as to make most wizards give a toss about most mundanes. Prejudice doesn't go away that fast, you know that as well as I do."

"Unfortunately." Harry scowled. "Damn it. Oh, well, we'll have to push on and see if we can find the sods. We may need Tonks sooner rather than later, she could be a big help."

"As I said, you can borrow her. But you can't keep her, so no trying to bribe her away from me, or I'll be very annoyed. Understand me?" He glared at Harry, who looked innocently back.

"Would I do that?"

"In a heartbeat, and we both know it. Stop snickering, Weasley, you're just as bad as he is."

"I'm not snickering."

"You were almost _giggling_. Stop it."

Harry grinned, standing up and retrieving the phone. "We'll get to work, Neville. PWI is on the case, you have nothing to worry about."

As he and Ron left the office, the DMLE director was just dropping his head into his hands and groaning. It was odd, he did that almost every time.

For some reason.

* * *

Feeling a familiar presence even as he heard the faint sound of his flat front door closing, Harry looked up from his desk to see Hermione watching him from the door to his study. She was leaning on the door frame, smiling slightly, and seemed happy to see him. "Hi," he said as he put his pen down and leaned back in his chair, stretching. She walked over and put her hands on his shoulders, massaging the tension away. "Oh, Merlin, your hands are amazing," he moaned.

She laughed slightly, continuing the massage. "You say that every time," she remarked with amusement.

"I mean it every time," he sighed, relaxing in stages. "You could charge anything you want for this sort of thing."

"I make more than enough money already, Harry, I don't need more," she said quietly, leaning down to his ear. "But I'm happy to help a friend."

Putting his right hand on hers, he squeezed it in thanks, then released her. "I'm happy to have you as a friend, Mione," he muttered. "Even if you won't tell me where you disappear to every year."

She giggled, finishing the massage, then straightened up. "You probably wouldn't believe me anyway," she replied lightly, stepping back. "Tea?"

"Thanks," he smiled, watching as she walked out the door and disappeared around the corner. He heard the sound of cupboards being opened and closed moments later. "And I'd probably believe anything you told me," he called more loudly.

Her head reappeared around the doorway, a mischievous grin on her face. "You say that, but you really wouldn't. I'm half tempted to tell you just so I could say I told you so."

"Go on then," he challenged, only getting a wink back as she vanished again. Snickering, since he'd had this conversation more than once and knew full well she wasn't going to divulge her secret, he closed the folder he'd been reading and pushed all the paperwork into a couple of piles, then got up and went into the kitchen.

"Are you back properly now, or only for a few days before you rush off again?" he asked, while she poured hot water into the teapot. As always he was rather tickled by the way that she, probably one of the most powerful and learned witches in recent history, tended to avoid casual use of most magic without really thinking about it. She seemed to prefer to do things the hard way the majority of the time, something quite alien to the bulk of wizard-kind.

"I'm back for a few months now," she replied, putting the lid on the pot to allow it to steep for a moment. Leaning back on the edge of his worktop, her hands to either side, she looked at him. "There's a possibility I might have to pop away again every now and then but it would only be for a couple of days most of the time. We've got one or two projects that may need monitoring."

"Fair enough," he nodded.

"Well, then, aside from this recent case, how is PWI doing?" she asked after a few seconds of companionable silence. "I did hear a rumor that you managed to remodel another valuable house. Right down to the foundations, in fact." She was grinning again, making him sigh. "You really should stop doing that, Harry. They're going to start naming the craters after you, you know."

"They already do," he sighed, making her eyes light up with amusement. "But I still say the last one was that crazy cult's fault."

"And nothing at all to do with a field test of George and Fred's latest little experiment?" she quipped. "Possibly to excess?"

"I have no idea where you might have picked up such an odd idea," he said calmly. She snorted with laughter and turned back to the tea, quickly finishing it and putting the pot and a couple of cups on a tray along with milk and sugar. He preceded her back into the living room, dropping onto the sofa. She sat at the other end, at a slight angle so she could face him, putting the tray down on his low table. Soon both of them were holding cups.

"I have my sources, Harry," she said after a trial sip, while she added a splash more milk. "These sort of stories get around." After another sip, she smirked a little and added, "I won ten galleons from Fred."

"Oh, thanks very much," he growled. "My best friend, the woman who has my complete trust, is taking bets on whether I blow up another house. The shame of it all."

Lifting her cup in a salute she winked. "It was indeed shameful. I should have bet more."

Both of them grinned at each other. "I've got some really nice lemon meringue pie in the fridge," he said. "Fancy a piece?"

"Ooh, yes, please, I love it," she nodded eagerly. "Is it from that new place on Diagon?"

"Yes," he replied, heading for the kitchen again. "Best bakery I've ever been to." Shortly he came back with two plates and a couple of forks, handing her one. She accepted it and quickly tried the pie, moaning in satisfaction.

"Oh, that's so _good_ ," she said in the tones of one who is enjoying their food. "I missed this. Although a friend introduced me to a bakery that does very good doughnuts. I'll have to bring some back next time." They finished the pie in silence after that, until she was left scraping the last traces up with the edge of the fork. Looking mildly disappointed, the brunette put the plate down and leaned back. "Was my information of use to you?" she asked after a while.

Harry, who had put his plate down again and poured them both more tea, nodded. "It was. Your friend the Cardinal was very helpful too. One day I'd be interested in knowing how on earth you met the chap..." He looked meaningfully at her, but she only smiled mysteriously back at him. "I see. Well, in any case, the names he gave us are beginning to pay dividends. We've traced four people on his list so far, and managed to get more names and a couple of locations out of them. Tonks was a big help in that. I wish she'd come work for us."

"Neville would go mad if you nick his best Auror," she pointed out with a giggle.

"So he said." Harry sighed forlornly. "He's changed too. When did all my friends become so… so _safe?_ "

Hermione gaped at him, then started laughing like an idiot. "Oh, Harry," she snickered, wiping tears from her eyes. "Only you." He grinned back and shrugged. "Poor Neville has a lot of responsibilities these days, you know that. He has to at least _appear_ to be the sane one. And Ron is just as mad as you are or he wouldn't be working with you in the first place."

"And you?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. "Are you mad?"

"Oh, completely," she smiled. "But in a very different way. All wizards and witches are, you know. Completely barking, the lot of us."

"You're not wrong," he agreed. "But I prefer my mad people to be amusingly eccentric, not homicidally crazy. These loonies we're chasing are definitely the wrong type of insane."

She sobered up, nodding. "I'd have to agree, yes," she said quietly. "That ritual was close to brilliant, but the sort of mind that would even think it up in the first place is… broken. Never mind _use_ it. They need to be stopped as soon as possible. Before whatever they're trying to do gets done."

"Don't suppose you have any more ideas about what that might be?" he asked with slight hope. She sighed and shrugged a little.

"Not really, not enough to nail it down to one specific thing. I'm almost certain it will turn out to be one of the things on the list I gave you, but which one I couldn't say at this point. I'm afraid there isn't enough to go on yet."

" _All_ the things on that list are horrifying," he commented with a shiver.

"I know, Harry, believe me, I know. If I could point you at them right now, I would. And I'd happily help you deal with them. Permanently." She watched his face for a moment. "You know you're going to have to do that? These people, they're not going to stop unless you _stop_ them. Anyone who would stoop to the things they've been doing has gone far past any morals we'd recognize as such and won't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in the way."

"Yeah, I realize that," Harry replied after a while, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. He felt her take his hand and squeeze it gently. "I don't _want_ to kill people, Mione," he added softly. "Sometimes I have to, usually because they're trying to kill me or Ron or some innocent bystander, but I never want to. This world sucks at times."

"They mostly all do," she replied, equally quietly. "Free will is a bastard like that."

The pair sat in silence for a while. He was just idly wondering about what exactly she meant about ' _all_ ' worlds when she spoke up. "Be careful, Harry. Please. I couldn't bear to have you hurt. Or Ron. You two mean the world to me, even if we don't see each other much of the time."

He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side to look at her. "Thanks," he finally replied. "I don't know what I'd do without you either. You've got enough brains to make up for Ron and me both."

She smiled a little. "You're both quite bright, Harry. Despite what some at Hogwarts might have thought years ago. Even Ron finally started to take his work seriously, and he was surprisingly good at it when he did. Neither one of you would be so good at what you do if you weren't intelligent. Power only takes you so far after all."

"Quite bright," he echoed with a faint smirk. "Compared to you we're just monkeys with sticks, though."

"I quite like monkeys," she giggled, making him chuckle. "Don't put yourself down." She paused, then added with a snicker, "That's my job."

"Oh, ha ha, very funny." He shook his head a little. "Enough of this doom and gloom. I can't do much more tonight, and I haven't seen you for more than a couple of hours for months. How are your parents? And that thing you call a cat?"

"Mum and Dad are fine, thanks," she smiled. "I must go and see them tomorrow, but we spoke on the phone when I got back. Their practice is going well, they're thinking of expanding to take on more NHS work since there's a call for it locally. Crookshanks is fine too. Don't let him hear you say that, though. You know what he's like."

Harry looked around a little nervously. He did indeed know what her incredibly ugly cat was like. Vindictive, evil, much too smart for its own good, and very, very sneaky. And he was pretty sure it actually did understand a lot more English than even a magical animal should, although luckily the thing was also a typical cat and too lazy to go out of its way unless you annoyed it. If Hermione was back, it meant her demonic cat was too, so he needed to be careful…

She was now grinning at him, knowing full well what he was thinking. "Can't you do us a favor and leave him wherever it is you go?"

"He would miss home too much, Harry," she giggled. "Would you leave Hedwig somewhere?"

"No, of course not," he replied, shaking his head. "She'd find me and kill me. Or worse."

Both of them looked at the currently empty perch for the aforementioned owl, who was out terrorizing the rodent population of the area. "You would probably regret it, I agree," Hermione nodded. "She doesn't suffer fools gladly."

"Not even a little," he agreed. "And like your cat-monster, she's too smart for her own good. I managed to forget to leave the window open a few weeks ago when I went out with Ron, and when I got home, one entire pane of glass was missing. Not broken, _missing._ I still don't know how the hell she did that. There wasn't a trace of it anywhere. And she was sitting on her perch looking as smug as the twins after a good prank, waiting for me."

He sighed while she laughed. "And when I went to bed, you know what I found?"

"Go on," she urged, her hand over her mouth.

"The head of the biggest sodding rat I've ever seen in my life on my pillow," he grumbled. " _Only_ the head. It was huge, and really revolting."

"Have you been watching ' _The Godfather_ ' again?" Hermione said when she finally stopped giggling. "She's impressionable and learns very fast."

"Don't remind me." He glanced at the perch again. "Sometimes I wonder if I should lock the door when I turn the telly on. Just in case." They shared a smile again. "Thanks for whatever it was you did to my electronics to keep them working, by the way. Oh, that reminds me, Fred wants you to pop around and sort out a faster computer for them. They're getting a broadband internet connection now, they say the internet is _full_ of ideas for pranks."

"Oh dear," she murmured. "Possibly trying to mix mundane culture with wizarding culture has gone too far..."

"Way too late for that, Mione," he grinned. " _Way_ too late. And it's all your fault."

The woman beside him shrugged after a moment of thought. "Well, at least it's having a slow but steady effect on our generation. Which is long overdue." Moving slightly and leaning against him, she finished the last of the tea then put the cup down. "As much as I love my work and all my friends, I'm glad I'm back here for a while," she remarked quietly as he put his arm over her shoulders. "I miss you daft buggers when I'm away. And worry you'll get into something even you can't handle."

"Ah, no need to worry, Herms," he smiled. "We can handle most things. And we know that if we can't, you'll turn up sooner or later and pull our balls out of the fire."

"I have no intention of going anywhere near your balls, Harry," she sniffed archly with a roll of her eyes. "As I have made plain more than once. However, I will certainly always come to help you if you need it."

He grinned, pulling her closer and dropping a kiss on top of her head. "I know, Mione. And I'm very grateful. Not many people have friends like you."

She smiled up at him, both of them simply sitting there in companionable silence for some time. When she finally gently disentangled herself and got up, she watched him sleepily stretch.

"Go to bed, Harry, you need the sleep," she advised. "You've been working very hard recently."

"I will, Hermione," he promised, yawning. "See you tomorrow?"

"I'll be around. If you're very good, I'll even help you with your case." She smirked at him. "I could do with something nice and easy after all the really hard thinking I've been doing for the last few months."

He snickered, getting up and starting to clear away the tea things and the plates. "The horrifying thing is that I can well imagine you're not joking," he retorted, making her laugh again. With a wave, she headed for the front door. Moments later it softly closed behind her. Shaking his head at how she could always put him in a good mood and wondering yet again where she went and what she really did for a living, he finished tidying up and went to bed. She was certainly right that he needed the sleep. This case wasn't going to solve itself and he would have to maintain a clear head to get anywhere.

* * *

{ _Do you need any backup?_ }

{No, not at the moment. They're closing in on the sods, I'm certain they'll find them sooner or later. Probably sooner, knowing Harry and Ron. They're very good at what they do and very persistent too.}

{ _OK. When they do, are you planning on stepping in?_ }

{Only if I have to. But I'll be keeping an eye on them. I've got monitoring spells on both of them and several others too, so if anything goes wrong I can get there instantly. And I've got the BFG if I really need the firepower. Kevin insisted.}

{ ** _You_** _of all people hardly need a weapon, but it's always good to have options. I understand why he's like that. He worries about his friends, Hermione. We all do. You're as much a part of the Family as anyone. Be careful, and look after your friends. I'd like to meet them one day._ }

{You probably will. I want to see their faces when you do, with a camera ready.}

{ _We'll have to work out who to introduce them to first, in that case..._ }

{Quite. I'll keep you informed about what happens. I'm curious to find out where these people got the information they used to modify that ritual. Some of the math involved is definitely not locally derived, I'm certain. I recognize parts of it. Which leaves me wondering who _else_ has visited in the past.}

{ _We're certainly not the only ones with the ability to travel between worlds, but I agree it's somewhat odd. That part of the multiverse doesn't have a lot of inter-reality travel as far as I know for a number of reasons. It's not like_ ** _some_** _places we've been_.}

{No, true enough. I'm going to have to look into it, just in case there's some threat. I doubt there is, from what I could tell it's probably information that's been hidden in plain sight for centuries, so whoever brought it here is probably long dead. But why take chances?}

{ _Fair point. And just because it's a few centuries, it doesn't necessarily mean the people involved are dead at all. As you know._ }

{Well, yes, I admit that's true. But there aren't many humans around these parts that can look forward to much more than a hundred and fifty years or so at most.}

{ _Yet_.}

{That's still a long term plan. A lot of things here need to change before it's viable. We know what happens if you rush these things.}

{ _All too well. All right, thanks for updating me. Good luck. Say hi to your parents for me._ }

{I will. They wanted to know when you were going to be in the area again, they were thinking about another meal some time.}

{ _My schedule is pretty full for the next… month or so. But we can probably arrange something after that._ }

{Wonderful. I'll let them know. I'd better go now, though, I've had a long day and I still need to write up a report for Merico.}

{ _OK. Tell the crazy old man I'm looking forward to the next chess game_.}

{All right. You really shouldn't keep teasing him about Churchmen playing games with demons, though. Someone might get annoyed sooner or later.}

{ _Hey, he started it! For a priest he's got a very weird sense of humor, and the most open mind I've come across in years._ }

{I'm sure he likes you too, Taylor. I'll call again soon. Bye.}

{ _Bye, Hermione._ }

* * *

Harry nudged Ron, then nodded discreetly towards the old wizard who was hobbling in their direction, grumbling audibly about the pointlessness of the young these days and how youth was wasted on the ungrateful little bastards. Even in the more than a little sketchy area they were currently inhabiting, he was having people glance at him and detour cautiously around him.

They waited for him to pass, both of them covertly watching the reflections in the shop window they were apparently browsing the contents of, then exchanged a look when he turned left and limped into a small alleyway a few doors down from their location. After a handful of seconds, they began moving slowly and naturally in that direction, discussing the weather and other random subjects as well as stopping every now and then to look into other shops. A minute or so passed until they were sure no one was either following or watching, then they both nipped into the same alley after the old man.

"You two are getting slow," a querulous voice snapped, making them turn and whip their wands out, then relax as they found the ancient wizard standing behind a pile of boxes to their rear.

"Had to make sure no one was following, didn't we?" Ron growled.

"Think I can't do that, boy?"

"I think you're getting too much into the role, myself," Harry chuckled. The grizzled and bewhiskered face in front of him suddenly smiled, then the old man straightened up. ' _His_ ' face flowed into a much more familiar and much more feminine one. Tonks grinned at them.

"You have to immerse yourself in the character to make it believable," she said in her normal voice. "Trust me, I'm a professional. I know what I'm doing."

"Sure you do," he snickered. She stuck her tongue out at him, then shrugged.

"Most of the time."

"Any luck?" Ron asked, looking both ways down the alley. They were some sixty feet in, around a couple of corners, but he was still on edge, as the other two were as well.

Tonks nodded. "Yeah. I found him. Got him good and drunk too, lightweight can't hold his fire-whiskey. But we're going to have to nab him and take him somewhere for proper questioning. He's definitely the right one, and he _definitely_ knows something about Margrave's group. The guy went a very weird color when that name came up while we were talking about Devost, and shut up on the spot. Even drunk he didn't want to say anything."

"Did you manage to get the tracer on him?" Harry inquired.

"Of course I did," she scowled. "How long have I been doing this job? This isn't my first covert mission by a long, long way."

"Wonderful." Harry smiled at her. "You really should come and work for PWI, you know. Talent like yours could take you a long way in an up and coming company like ours."

She cocked her head a little and smirked at him, her hair briefly taking on her customary bright pink. "The Director would be furious if he heard you say that. He warned me not to listen to your temptations."

Harry winked. "I will tempt you again some other time, then."

Twitching at a faint sound, Tonks reached into her robes and pulled out a small device, checking it quickly. "He's on the move."

"Good." Harry glanced at Ron, who nodded. "Everything's in place. We just need to get him away from the crowds."

"All right." The woman quickly shifted her appearance back to the old wizard, bending down into a perfect pose of an ancient and partly crippled man. "Plan A it is," his creaky voice continued. "Let's see if this is the one that cracks this case."

"Give us two minutes lead, OK?"

' _He_ ' nodded, stepping back into the shadows of the tower of crates. Harry and Ron quickly disillusioned themselves, then hastened out back to the street, splitting up and going in opposite directions. A couple of minutes later the old wizard hobbled back out of the alley and headed off towards the next pub, entirely coincidentally bumping into someone staggering down the road reeking of alcohol. The much younger man nearly fell, caught himself on a lamp-post, turned to berate whoever had got in his way, and ended up in a drunken argument. Harry watched from a couple of hundred yards while the disguised Tonks managed to persuade her new acquaintance that ' _he_ ' knew a place that served much cheaper alcohol, both of them soon wandering off in a different direction.

Following at a distance as they turned down a side road, he waited for them to go into one of the most disreputable-appearing pubs he'd ever seen, then followed, dropping the disillusion spell on the way. None of the random passersby appeared to either notice or care, not surprising around these parts. People tended to stick to their own business for many reasons, self-preservation being the main one.

By the time he entered the pub, the old wizard and his younger drinking friend were nowhere to be seen. Catching the eye of the ratty looking bartender, he raised his eyebrows. The man made a discreet motion to a door at the back of the bar area as he turned to serve a patron. Walking over to the door without appearing to look around, although he was very aware of the scattering of other people in the place, Harry listened for a second, then opened it and slipped through.

"What kept you?" Tonks, now looking like her normal self again, asked as she looked around. She appeared satisfied with her work.

He shrugged, glancing at Ron who had preceded them all here. He had just finished lifting the unconscious form of their target into a chair. Making sure the door was firmly locked, both mechanically and with several spells, Harry went to help arrange their captive. "Good work, Tonks," he said when the man was bound in place and had been carefully searched. Both the wands he'd been carrying, as well as a number of rings and other items, were securely locked away in a small warded box.

"Like I said, I'm a professional," she smiled. "Snatch and grab routines are my bread and butter, along with covert investigations. I'm very good at what I do."

"Job offer is still on the table," he said mildly. She just looked at him, then sighed.

"You know, I see far more of Sirius in you sometimes than I should do."

He grinned. "What can I say? He's a bad influence."

"Tell me about it." She grinned back. "I'll have to stop by and see him next time he's in town."

"Better get on with this, sooner or later someone's going to notice him missing," Ron pointed out, having pulled a number of things out of his pockets and set them up on the wobbly table next to their captive. "You two can flirt some other time."

"We're not flirting." Both his companions spoke at the same time, then exchanged a look of humor.

He stared at them. "Of _course_ you're not," he grumbled. "Tonks will flirt with _anything_ , and we all know what Harry's like."

"To business, then," she snickered while Harry smiled a little. "Hand me that vial, legally I have to be the one to administer it. And get his mouth open."

Very soon, they'd administered the correct amount of truth potion and woken the captive up. He blinked blankly, looking at them. Picking up a notebook, Harry started asking questions while Tonks and Ron wrote down the answers.

* * *

 ****  
"Lubachoinnich? Never heard of it." Neville looked puzzled. Harry spread a map out on his desk, pointing to a spot north of Inverness in the far north of Scotland.

"Right here. Tiny little place. The mundanes think it's only half a dozen cottages or something like that, but there's a biggish manor house off to the west about four miles with a little village near it, under aversion wards and so on. The usual stuff. The family that owned it died out completely back in the late seventeen hundreds, as far as we can tell, but the house and village are still there up in the hills. Our chap said that Devost found details of the place in an old book he acquired ten or eleven years ago, and managed to reset the wards to him."

"He also said that Devost sold the place about five years ago to an older man who matches the description of Aldous Margrave," Ron added. "Someone the fellow was very insistent he never wanted to meet again. He's apparently rather terrifying." He shook his head, adding, "As if we couldn't work that out from what he's done. In any case, it's looking very likely that this group is probably based there. Nothing around for miles. But what we could find out about it suggests it's capable of supporting dozens of people without any trouble."

"I think it's worth checking out at least," Tonks put in from where she was leaning on a filing cabinet listening. "We've tracked down everyone on Hermione's tame Cardinal's list except Devost himself, and everyone all of _them_ pointed us at, and this is the only real clue we have. Other than this, the entire group is running completely dark, so it's not like we have many alternatives."

Leaning back in his chair the DMLE director considered the problem, looking at each of them in turn. "No other leads?"

"No." Harry shook his head, then paused. "Well, perhaps one. But it's a long shot. There's a bare chance that I know someone who might have more information. Assuming he'll talk to me."

"Who?" Neville asked curiously.

Harry sighed a little. "Draco Malfoy."

Peering at him with a raised eyebrow, the Director said, "How are you going to get him to even agree to talk to you, never mind tell you anything useful? He's not your biggest fan, you know."

Ron snickered, making Harry glare at him. "I'm well aware of that, Nev," he grunted. "Little blond tit. Never did like him."

"The feeling was entirely mutual, Harry," Ron smiled.

"It's not you liked him any more than I did," Harry told him with asperity. "In fact, I seem to remember that the day I met you, _and_ him, _you_ were the one to start things."

Ron rocked a hand from side to side. "I think it was more mutual, really. Although as I remember _he_ started it."

"Hmm. Not how I recall it, but whatever. At least he grew up pretty sharpish when his father popped his clogs. To a point, anyway. He was still an irritating and arrogant little prick, but he stopped most of the deliberate provocation." Harry sighed again. "I can't really blame him for some of it. We weren't exactly nice to him either."

"Being nice to a Malfoy was usually a waste of time," Neville pointed out with a shake of his head. "They took it as a sign of weakness half the time, and a trick the other half. But I'd agree he did change after that, mostly for the better."

"He could hardly change for the worst without becoming a cold-blooded murderer like his father was," Tonks muttered. "Never liked that bastard. Bloody man should have been executed the first time he was caught."

"Agreed, but it's a moot point now and has been for years," Neville nodded. "You think Draco would have more information?"

"Cardinal Pisani did say that Devost visited the Malfoys every now and then and was distantly related. Perhaps Draco would know about that, and it might help to talk to him. Worth a try, anyway." Harry shrugged. "We have so little to go on and I really don't like walking into something like this blind. It's bad enough when we know for a fact that some cult is waiting for us. For all we know this is just an elaborate trap. Margrave isn't an idiot from what we've managed to find out and he seems to have a lot of resources."

"True." Neville pondered the situation for a while as they waited quietly. "All right. I agree it's worth talking to him. Although how you're going to do that I have no idea. It's not as if we have any legal leg to stand on at the moment, so I can't send Tonks with a warrant. And PWI doesn't technically have any authority in this sort of matter either. You're going to have to persuade him nicely or something of that nature." He looked amused as Harry frowned. "Somehow."

"We do know someone who could probably help," Ron suggested. Everyone looked at him. "I happen to know that Hermione actually gets on with Malfoy. More or less, at least as much as anyone does. Why, I have no idea, but they at least respect each other."

"That's… a valid idea, Ron," Harry nodded after a few seconds of thought. "You're right. I know she's spent some time talking to the Malfoys over the years. It's worth asking her if nothing else. Worst case she can't help and we're back where we started."

"All right." Neville sat up, picking up the paperwork they'd put on his desk and leafing through it. "Good work, all of you. I'll talk to the Minister and update her on the case. You talk to Hermione, see if she can get you a meeting with Mr Malfoy. Tonks, write up your final report on the interrogations and get it to me as soon as you can."

All three of them nodded. "Harry, stop trying to steal Tonks," the Director added casually.

Harry gave his cousin a hard look. "Why did you tell him?"

She grinned. "I didn't. You just did."

He put a hand on his face as Neville chuckled. "I mean it, I need her more than you do. Be polite and I'll let you borrow her again. Get back to me as soon as you have anything more."

With a shake of his head, Harry motioned to his partner and both of them got up and headed for the door. "You're getting sneaky in your old age, Nev," he complained as he left.

"Old _age?!_ I'm the exact same bloody age _you_ are, Potter!" Neville shouted as they left. A faint chuckle came back through the door before it swung closed, while Tonks started laughing.

* * *

"Try not to antagonize him, Harry."

"Would I do that?" Harry asked. Hermione gazed evenly at him, making his insouciant smile slowly fade. Eventually he nodded, sighing. "Fine. Take all the fun out of it."

"You're the one who wants his help, so at least pretend to be civilized," she commented with a small evil grin.

He stepped back, putting his hand on his chest in mock outrage. "Me? Uncivilized? What you think me am, savage?"

"Idiot." She glanced at her watch, then nodded. "All right. I'll go first. Please try, for once, to behave."

Harry looked at Ron who was watching them both with amusement. "She's so strict," he complained.

"She always has been, Harry. You know that."

With a sniff of annoyance they both knew meant she was suppressing a smile, Hermione walked over to the fireplace and tossed some floo powder into it. "Malfoy Manor," she commanded as the fire turned green. "Really must come up with something less ridiculous than this one day," he heard her add under her breath. He snickered, she'd always said that jumping into a fireplace to get anywhere was daft, and he tended to agree. Still, it worked.

A face appeared in the flames. "Oh, hello, Hermione," Narcissa Malfoy said once she'd looked around the room. "Mr Potter. Mr Weasley. You'd better come through, I suppose." Her face displayed controlled neutrality, although Harry was fairly sure she'd momentarily looked slightly pleased to see his friend. Her face disappeared and Hermione stepped into the flames, vanishing as it flared up. Ron and Harry repeated the process, soon finding themselves standing in the entrance-way to Malfoy Manor.

Harry looked quickly around, noticing that it didn't look any different from the single other time he'd been there years ago. Still overly elaborate, still showing off wealth in a manner he didn't personally find attractive. He much preferred his fairly modest flat, although he could certainly afford something bigger. There was just no real need for it at the moment.

"Draco is expecting you, he's in his study," Narcissa said to Hermione.

"I remember the way," she nodded.

"In that case I'll leave you to it, I have some letters to write." The older woman glanced at Harry and Ron, then leaned a little closer to the brunette. "Please try to keep your… friends… under control."

The corners of her mouth twitching, Hermione nodded soberly, causing Narcissa to look mildly approving for a moment. She straightened up, nodded to both men, then left. They heard her calling for one of the house elves moments later.

"It's this way," Hermione said, turning and pointing in the other direction. "Past the library, upstairs." She headed for the exit from the foyer, both the others falling in behind her.

"How on earth do you know your way around Malfoy Manor, Hermione?" Ron asked curiously.

"Because I've been here before, a number of times," she replied over her shoulder. "Obviously."

"It's not obvious at all, to be honest," Harry pointed out with a small frown. " _Why_ would you be in Malfoy Manor?"

"To look through the library," she said, looking back at him with a roll of her eyes. There was an amused glint in them. "Again, obviously."

They headed up a flight of stairs at the end of the long corridor they'd just walked down, turning at the top to go back in the other direction. Their footsteps were almost silent on the thick carpet.

"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Harry complained. She looked back and winked, then stopped at an elaborately carved door and knocked a couple of times before opening it.

Harry exchanged a look with Ron, both of them shrugged, and they followed. "Hello, Draco," their friend said, greeting the familiar ice-blond man who stood up and came around an enormous desk to meet her.

"Hermione," he said, almost smiling momentarily. He shook her hand, then turned to the two men. "Potter. Weasley. Still sneaking around chasing idiots?" Draco had a definite smirk when he said that, one they were long familiar with.

"We are indeed," Harry smiled broadly, nodding. "So many idiots, so little time. And so much money in catching them."

"Which is mostly going on repairing the damage you two cause from what I hear," his old school nemesis commented with a certain amount of snide humor. "I'm genuinely surprised you can turn a profit. Or that Director Longbottom _hires_ you rather than _arrests_ you."

"Draco," Hermione said softly, causing him to look at her. "Be nice."

He sighed faintly. "You never let me have any fun, Hermione," he complained. Glancing at the other two, he added, "She's so strict, have you noticed?"

"We were saying that not ten minutes ago," Harry agreed. He was still trying to work out why the man was so mellow, considering that the last time they'd met in public it had ended up with a whole series of fairly imaginative insults on both sides. Draco's wife had ended up dragging him away while lecturing him on how to behave in public.

They shared a look of understanding as Hermione folded her arms and tapped her fingers on her elbows while _looking_ at them. "Shall we dispense with the dubious humor and get down to business?" she asked when they stepped back simultaneously. Yet again, Harry was impressed with how intimidating she could look when she wanted to.

It was a gift, definitely.

"I suppose that is the sensible thing," Draco said, waving to a set of expensive chairs around a table on the other side of the room. "Please sit. Coffee? Tea?"

"Coffee, please," Ron replied.

"Same for me." Harry took a chair, both his friends doing the same.

"And tea for Hermione, as usual," Draco said. "Kitty!"

A muted pop heralded the appearance of a house elf, who looked around at them with huge eyes, then concentrated on her master. "Three coffees, and Miss Granger's usual, please."

"Yes, Master Draco," the elf said quietly, and disappeared again with another faint pop. Ron and Harry exchanged a look. They remembered how Draco's father had treated house elves, and it was nothing even remotely like his son did based on what they'd just seen. He was almost respectful, more so than most wizards were by a long way.

He noticed them looking at him with surprise, pulling the last chair out and sitting in it. "I am not my father, Potter," he said by way of explanation. "It was pointed out to me rather forcefully quite some time ago how one could get much better service in many places in life by being polite rather than rude." He was carefully not looking at Hermione, Harry noticed. "Remarkably enough, it turns out to be true. A lesson my father never taught me. Perhaps, thinking back, one he didn't know himself." He shrugged. "It would go some way to explaining a few decisions he made that I have issue with even now."

A silver tray with the coffee and tea on it appeared in the middle of the table, completely silently, a smaller one with some snacks on it coming into existence next to the first tray moments later. "Kitty does anticipate my wishes far better than I would have believed," Draco added, standing to serve Hermione with her tea. He offered both the men their coffee too, then sat down with his own. "Please help yourselves to the food."

All four were silent for a little while, Ron eating a couple of sandwiches after looking slightly suspiciously at them until Hermione took one with a very faint sigh. After that he seemed entirely fine with the things. "So. Hermione told me you wished to talk to me, and persuaded me I should allow this." Draco leaned back and watched them over his coffee cup, cradling it in both hands. "We're here. I'm listening."

Putting his cup down, Harry pulled out a notebook and pen, putting them on the table. "We're investigating a very nasty case for the DMLE at the moment," he began. "Multiple murders, torture, blood sacrifice..."

"Another death cult," Draco noted as he trailed off.

"Yes."

"And this concerns me how?"

"Aside from the fact that possibly over a hundred people have so far died, you mean?" Harry met the eyes of the other man evenly.

"Aside from that. I don't, after all, know any of them."

"Very cold. Very Malfoy."

Draco shrugged with a small smirk.

"A name came up. One we're led to believe may be familiar to you?"

"Oh?"

"Aubin Devost. Our information is that he's a distant relative, and may well have been in this house on a number of occasions."

Harry didn't miss the slight twitch Draco made at the name. He glanced at Ron, who had clearly spotted it too. Apparently content to let Harry do the talking, the red-head merely waited.

"Devost. Hmm. Yes, I do vaguely recognize that name from somewhere." Draco leaned forward and snagged a sandwich, taking a bite from it and chewing contemplatively. "I can't think quite where, though."

Harry looked at Hermione with a long-suffering gaze. She peered back at him, then nodded sideways at Draco as if to say ' _Go on_.' So he did.

"Possibly in connection with the name Aldous Margrave?"

Draco went completely, utterly still, his sandwich half raised for another bite. There was an uncomfortable silence for nearly twenty seconds, until he swallowed, then put the half-eaten food down on his saucer. "Could you repeat that?"

"Aldous Margrave."

Another silence, then the man closed his eyes. "Oh, fuck," he said very quietly. Harry was almost shocked by the comment, since in all the years he'd known the fellow, he'd never actually heard him _swear_.

"You know that name."

"Unfortunately, yes, I do. And if that lunatic is involved in anything, it's bad." Draco opened his eyes and met Harry's, who was startled by the worry he saw there. "I thought he was in prison. Or dead. I was hoping for dead, to be honest."

"He got out about eight years back and vanished."

"And entirely coincidentally people started disappearing, I suppose," Draco muttered. "Probably muggles."

Hermione cleared her throat.

"Mundanes then." The blond glared at her. "Although why you insist on that name..."

"Muggle is deliberately provocative, racist, and demeaning, as I have explained," Hermione said firmly.

"Yes, yes, fine. Whatever. Margrave. Merlin help us all." Draco shook his head. "And Devost is involved with him?"

"As far as we can establish, yes," Ron nodded. "From what we can tell he's the source of some rare books that may have been used in the rituals they came up with."

"That doesn't surprise me," Draco mused out loud. "That man was always much too interested in Dark rituals. He even made Father nervous, at times. And I'm positive that at least one of our own more disturbing books vanished the last time he visited. No real loss in a sense, it's probably best gone, if it wasn't concerning who took it." He looked up from staring into his empty coffee cup. "All right. Tell me more about what you have on Devost and I'll see if I can fill in the gaps. But in all honesty I don't know all that much about him. He's something like a fourth cousin on Father's side of the family, I believe. He visited a few times, the last one being… Oh, probably about fifth year of Hogwarts, I think. Some time before… it… happened."

Harry opened his notebook and scribbled down a few words.

"From what we've heard, I'm slightly surprised that he didn't join Riddle's lot," Ron commented.

Draco shrugged. "He wasn't interested in that sort of rubbish, really. Dark, yes, but not in the way that Riddle was. He valued his own skin far too much to get involved in the blood wars. Ran away to America and hid there until Riddle was safely dead, as far as I know. He only visited occasionally after that, probably mainly to steal books from private libraries. He was… acquisitive."

"That fits what we know," Harry nodded.

"Margrave, though..." Draco thought for a moment, and shivered slightly. "I know very little about him but Father once mentioned in passing that he was the sort to make _Voldemort_ nervous. And didn't think the Dark Lord went far enough. Personally I'm glad I don't know much about the man."

Flipping pages, Harry stopped on the list of questions he, Ron, and Hermione had hashed out the night before. Looking up at Draco, he said, "All right. This is what we currently have..."

When they left over two hours later, none of the three were feeling particularly happy, but Harry at least was pleased with the results. They were a step closer, he could feel it. Neville would want to know about this as soon as possible.

They'd left a pensive Draco Malfoy staring into his fireplace, apparently thinking about certain relatives without much love.

* * *

 ****  
"One day you really have to tell me how you've managed to meet all these people," Harry said with a smile, watching as Hermione prepared some sort of stir-fry with significant skill. She shook the wok around, then put it back on the burner, tossing the contents with a wooden spoon. "You seem to have friends in strange places, and the strangest of all is Draco Malfoy. How did you ever end up on friendly terms with _him?_ "

She looked back at him, then returned her attention to what she was doing. "Draco is an intelligent man despite his early problems," she remarked softly, adding a pinch of a spice Harry didn't recognize. "When his father passed on, so horribly, it awakened a certain level of common sense he'd lacked up until then, I think. He certainly changed, as you'd expect. Over the years we've corresponded a number of times, and I've visited them as well. As I said, I requested the chance to go through his family library a couple of years ago. It took considerable persuasion but I persisted. He gave in eventually." She glanced back again, grinning briefly. "They usually do."

Harry shook his head in wonder. "I can believe it, somehow."

Pouring some sauce she'd prepared beforehand into the wok, a great cloud of steam rising with a loud sizzle, she briskly stirred the thing for a few seconds, then turned the gas down to allow it to simmer. "Hand me that jar on the counter, please," she requested without looking, motioning behind her. He did so.

When the brunette had finished mixing up another saucepan, this one full of noodles, she turned to him. "It'll be about ten minutes."

"Smells delicious," he said appreciatively.

"A good friend taught me this one," she smiled, leading the way back into the living room. Both of them sat, picking up the glasses of wine she'd poured a little earlier. "My job does seem to involve a lot of libraries," Hermione noted after a few sips. "I get around. And you meet the most fascinating people in libraries, too."

"Like a cardinal in the Vatican Library?" he chuckled.

"Quite. Merico is a nice man, and terribly smart."

"Is he a wizard? Or a squib or something?"

"No, he's entirely non-magical," she replied. "But I would pit his knowledge of magic against almost any wizard I've ever met. If he _was_ a magical, he'd easily qualify for at least two masteries, possibly more. And his knowledge of magical history is second to none. He could easily teach at Hogwarts, for example, aside from minor issues like being mundane. Or the fact that the _true_ history of magic would be… unpalatable… to the British magical world."

Harry looked strangely at her. "What do you mean?"

She sighed slightly, glancing at him. "Much of what we were taught in school is misleading at best, and a total untruth in several places. People tilt the records to support their own positions, of course. The saying that history is written by the winners isn't wrong, by and large. And the magical culture, certainly in this country, and to one degree or another everywhere else, is both paranoid and insular. There are some good reasons for that, but there are a lot more that are… debatable."

Hermione shrugged. "It's far too long winded to get into now. Let's just say that the official histories leave a _lot_ of things out and misrepresent several of the things they left in. One day I'll explain in more detail, but right now it's just a distraction."

"Cardinal Pisani did mention something of that nature," Harry mused. "I think Neville was very curious about it too."

"Merico would happily talk his ear off about it if he got the chance," she giggled. "Although I think poor Neville's head might explode. I doubt very much that he'd have been brought up to believe quite a few things he'd learn." She checked her watch, then stood up. "Will you set the table, Harry? I'll be right back."

When they were sitting down at her small table eating, Harry nodded in satisfaction. "This is _delicious_. Your friend knows some good recipes."

"She literally wrote a book on it," Hermione smiled. "Two, actually. Both were best sellers some years back."

"I'd like to see them one day," he commented.

"I'll see if I can get a copy of them at some point," she told him. They ate in silence for a while, until Harry sighed.

"Problem?"

"Just wondering what's going to be waiting for us in Lubachoinnich," he muttered. "I still can't help thinking it's a trap."

"It might be," she said calmly. "But if you _know_ it's a trap, you can spring it and get useful information on the trapper. It's only bad when you walk into one without your eyes open. Draco gave you enough extra information that you've managed to prove that Margrave was up there recently. He may well still be. His cult is definitely based in the area, that old manor is the most likely place, and you also know a number of other possibilities are now off the table. Everything points towards it being their base. Having looked at everything you've dug up, I'd put it at better than ninety percent probable."

"Neville agrees, as does Minister Bones," Harry nodded. "I'm just worried about that ten percent."

"Of course you are. It would be foolish not to be. But you're going in with your eyes open and as much equipment as the DMLE can provide. Fifty trained Aurors, including Tonks, you and Ron…" She smiled at him. "There are no more than thirty of the cultists, so I'd put your chances of complete success as very high."

"I certainly hope so," he said after a few more mouthfuls. "Hate to go all that way to fail. Or die."

"Don't die, then. Simple enough advice that even you should be able to follow, Harry." She grinned impishly at him as he rolled his eyes in humor. "Oh, that reminds me. I'll be right back."

She got up and left the room, coming back a little later with Crookshanks following her. The large and amazingly ugly cat jumped up on a chair and fixed Harry with an unnerving green-eyed stare that felt slightly disapproving. This was not unusual. Harry sometimes thought the animal felt he was a bad influence on his human.

Hermione put a box about the size of a load of bread on the table next to his plate and sat again. "That may help."

Putting his fork down, Harry picked up the box, finding it to be heavier than he expected. "What is it?" he asked as he found how to open it and did precisely that. Inside were a number of spheres about the size of snooker balls, covered in dozens of runes.

"Improved anti-portkey and anti-apparition wardstones, combined with a general purpose ward cracker," she said with a small smile. "Something I've been experimenting with for a while. They're similar to the ones Fred and George came up with, but better. They should block all incoming and outgoing portkeys and apparition for anyone not authorized, and at the same time take down any _other_ wards in the area. In theory if you set them up around the target zone and activate them, _you_ will be able to come and go and _they_ won't, and it will knock out all their existing wards in one shot."

Harry stared at the half-dozen spheres in shock, then raised his eyes to his friend's. She was looking pleased at his reaction. "Holy Merlin's nutsack," he breathed in amazement. "You came up with these yourself?"

"I did. As a side project from some research I was doing. The idea came to me one day and I made a few to test. They seemed to work, but I had limited time to properly experiment. I can't guarantee how long they'll work for, since these are only prototypes. They should be good for at least half an hour though."

Harry put the box down and reached in, picking up one of the oddly heavy gray metallic spheres, rolling in around in his fingers. He didn't recognize any of the runes at all, the symbols peculiarly hard to focus on. "Amazing. How do I use them?"

"It's simple enough. You'll need to place them evenly around the area you want to ward, which can be up to half a mile across. That little pendant in there is the activation unit. There's a manual as well. Make sure you read it! _Always_ read the manual." She grinned. "A friend of mine is constantly annoyed that people don't read the manual, so don't let me down. It tells you how to key people into it, and how to turn it on and off."

"You are truly something, Mione," he said after a few seconds, shaking his head slowly. He put the spherical device back and closed the box. "Thank you. This will be an enormous help."

"Sure you don't want me to come with you?" she asked, before putting the last of her stir-fry in her mouth.

He shook his head firmly. "As smart as you are, I'm the one with combat experience. You're a researcher, not a fighter."

"If you say so, Harry," she replied calmly. "Make sure you come back safely. If I have to come and rescue you I'll be quite irritated."

Reaching out, he patted her hand comfortingly. "We'll have to avoid that, then. No one wants to see an angry Hermione Granger."

"Not twice, certainly," she giggled. "Finish your food, I have mint ice cream for dessert."

He finished eating remarkably quickly.

* * *

 _Late that night, Hermione looked in the mirror in her bedroom, turning from side to side. "Still fits," she nodded, glancing at Crookshanks who was watching her alertly from her bed. "What do you think?"_

 _"Meow," he said evenly._

 _"Of course." She ran her hands down her sides, feeling the rough surface of the leather. "Hopefully we won't need to go after them, but just in case..."_

 _Walking over to the bed, she easily picked up the huge energy rifle that was lying there, activating it with a flick of a finger. It hummed faintly, a deep blue light somewhere deep inside the square barrel illuminating a patch of ceiling as she held it upright and checked the display on the top. Nodding, she turned it off and put it down again._

 _"Kevin is probably right, better to have it and not need it," she smiled to her cat, who yawned at her._

 _Shaking her head good-naturedly, she packed the weapon away, then undressed. Shortly she was under the covers, Crookshanks a familiar heavy weight leaning on her back just above her tail._

 _She fell asleep quickly, hoping that her friends would be successful and safe._

* * *

 ****  
"All right. Listen up, you lot!" Tonks looked around at the robed Aurors standing about the place. "Our target is just over that hill. We have positive ID of twenty-three people, and we suspect there are up to six more on site. This bunch is particularly nasty. They make the last death cult look fairly harmless, if that gives you an idea, and you know what _they_ were like."

"Mincemeat, after Potter and Weasley got through with them," someone called. Beside her Harry sighed audibly and Ron mumbled something rude. She shot them a glance, grinning a little.

"Shut up, Gibson," she said with good humor. "As I was saying, they're violent, deadly, and probably very skillful. You all have the information we gathered on the cult. Aldous Margrave is the priority target. He is to be killed on sight. The Minister signed the execution order this morning, so don't hesitate. Be assured _he_ won't. If you can take prisoners from the rest, _without_ putting yourself at risk, do it, but if there's any danger, shoot to kill. This is a proscribed death cult under the Act of 2001, every member in it can expect the Veil. And they'll know it. They have nothing to lose, we do."

"So don't lose," Harry put in. She nodded firmly.

"Exactly. Everyone is keyed into the anti-transport wards, so as soon as they go up, the cult is trapped. They'll probably work that out right quick so expect the fireworks to start almost instantly. Whatever it is that these crazy bastards are planning _must not happen._ We don't know for sure what it is, but it would be bad. Or worse. We go in, we kill Margrave, any cultists who get in the way, grab anyone we can, and get out. Then we blow the manor. Orders are nothing is to be left other than a smoking hole in the ground."

"Good thing we have Potter with us, then!" the same wag shouted. Harry gave him a middle finger, which made everyone laugh.

"Yeah, it probably is. OK, any questions?" She looked around, a sea of now-intent and serious faces looking back at her. "Good. You all know your assigned places. Get ready, we go as soon as the wards go down."

As one, the entire team nodded. "Stand ready. Wands out."

There was a ripple of motion, the Aurors separating into groups of five and moving to all face outwards, wands ready. "Do it, Harry."

Harry pulled the chain around his neck up to gain access to the control pendant for the system Hermione had given him the previous night. It had completely changed their battle plans in one shot, very unexpectedly, but they'd quickly rolled it into the planned operation. He glanced at Ron, who was holding his wand firmly and braced for action, then Tonks who was doing the same. "Three… Two… One..." he counted, before tapping the pendant with his wand. Everyone felt a wave of unusual magic pass through them.

"GO!" Tonks shouted. With a fusillade of sharp cracks, every person in the small clearing in the woods vanished.

* * *

 ****  
"Get down!" Harry yelled, knocking Ron to the ground just in time while he snapped off a shot from his wand. The cultist who had somehow managed to sneak up on them despite the raging battle dropped with a scream that died away in a gurgle of blood. A simple piercing spell was perfect for this sort of operation since it was literally point and shoot, and completely lethal if your aim was good. No sane person used anything fancy in a real battle. Reductos, piercing and cutting spells, and AKs were the order of the day.

And there were plenty of all of those flying about the place. When the cultists had realized they were under assault, they'd rallied appallingly quickly and well, barricading themselves into the manor and putting up some sort of warding none of the attackers had ever seen. It didn't last long each time, Hermione's experimental system dropping it nearly as fast as they could put it up, but they seemed able to reestablish it over and over again. Each time it went down everyone fired everything they had at the defenders, who returned the favor with great enthusiasm.

Every now and then one of them appeared from nowhere, doing his or her best to kill everyone in sight. So far they'd hadn't lost anyone, more by luck than anything else, but they had over a dozen with wounds of one level of severity or other, some very nasty. Harry had a large scorch mark down his right arm, and several cuts from near misses on his face and torso. Ron was limping due to a hastily patched hole punched through his left calf by a lucky shot from some distance.

The cultists had lost approximately half their number, but the remainder weren't showing any signs of giving up. If anything, they were getting more and more serious, and they'd started as fairly bloodthirsty.

"Thanks, mate," Ron huffed, rolling over and looking at the corpse of the man who'd nearly taken his head off. "That was close."

"This is awfully familiar," Harry agreed, ducking behind a rocky outcropping as a number of reductos zipped overhead and sprayed them both with shrapnel as they blew holes in the hillside. The manor was over a hundred yards away, right at the limit of spell range, but getting any closer was almost impossible due to the sheer intensity of spellfire coming from it. "Why do we always seem to end up hiding while people shoot at us?"

"Lucky, maybe?" Ron asked, peeking around the rocks they were lurking behind. He fired a couple of shots, taking careful aim, and was rewarded by a distant scream. "Not the _good_ sort of luck, of course," he added. "How many of these sods _are_ there? I thought we'd estimated only about thirty, and we've taken at least sixteen down so far without making much difference."

They both spun at the sound of someone approaching, wands up, then lowered them when they saw it was Tonks. She was covered in blood but seemed intact. Looking down at herself as they stared while she shuffled into place between them, she said, "Not mine. Well, most of it isn't."

"I'm beginning to think that fifty Aurors wasn't enough," Harry growled, sticking his head up then hastily retracting it. "These bastards are far too good shots for my liking."

"Hindsight, eh, Harry?" she quipped, quickly transfiguring a small rock into a mirror and holding it above her head and the rocks. Inspecting it, she sighed. "Damn it. They can't get away, but we don't have enough people to force our way past the defenses without risking losing most of them. This is a lot more resistance than they should have been able to rally."

"I think they might be tapping into whatever it was they've been making with all the sacrifices," Ron said darkly. "Can't you feel it? Something really horrible is happening in there, and it's been getting steadily worse for the last twenty minutes."

They exchanged glances. The red-head was right. The oppressive aura that everyone had noticed had been intensifying since they'd arrived, and was making their bones itch. Whatever was in there was nearing completion, they could sense that. And it wasn't going to be good, whatever it was.

"I've called for backup, but they're going to have to come in the hard way," Tonks replied. "With the anti-transport wards up, even brooms aren't working. I've seen two of the cultists try to make a run for it that way. They didn't make it." She smirked a little. "Hermione's work is… comprehensive."

"She didn't mention some of the things it does," he agreed. "And if we turn it off, they'll get away."

"Yeah. So we have to finish this here. And if she was right, we might only have another ten minutes or so before it fails." Harry checked the pendant he was still wearing. It was intermittently warming up slightly then cooling, and the pattern of runes on it indicated it was under heavy load. Even so, it didn't show imminent failure based on the manual he'd read carefully.

"We should be good for now, but I have no idea how long for," he said.

Another cultist appeared some fifty feet away, shouting something incomprehensible and furious. Three spells hit him simultaneously. When the echos died down, there was nothing left except for a large splash mark and a pair of smoking boots.

"Why are the boots always left behind?" Ron mused.

The other two shrugged. It was one of life's mysteries.

"No sign of Margrave yet," Tonks said, turning back to her mirror. "Or Devost. They must be inside somewhere. I think Ron's right, something is building up. I wish I knew what it was."

"Something we're not going to enjoy," Ron muttered. "Ten galleons says they're summoning a demon or something."

"I bloody well hope not," Tonks growled. "That's all we'd need. Death cults are bad enough _without_ demonic aid."

The sensation of imminent doom kept increasing. The volume of firing from the manor did as well. "Holy shit, how are they _doing_ that?" Harry yelped as dozens of spells roared past.

"No idea," Ron shouted over the sound of a volley of explosions. Screams on the other side of the manor could be heard echoing around the area as someone died horribly.

"Damn it," Tonks yelled, leaning around the boulder and firing a massively overpowered blasting spell that splashed uselessly against the on-again-off-again wards around the manor. "We're going to get slaughtered here, even without whatever the hell they're up to."

"You could probably do with some help, then," a voice said from a few yards behind them. All three spun in shock, reflexively firing at the figure that had suddenly appeared there.

They gaped as it silently vanished before any of the spells hit, reappearing a few feet to the side in a manner entirely unlike any apparition they'd ever seen. It simply blinked from one place to another without any fuss.

"No need for that, I'm a friend," the person said with a note of mild humor in its voice.

Or rather, _her_ voice. It was clearly female, dressed in form-fitting blue leather that Harry recognized as some form of extremely high quality dragon skin, although he didn't know which particular species it was. She was of medium height, slim, and had of all things a mask over her eyes.

He stared. Then he looked at Tonks and Ron, who looked back, appearing as bewildered as he felt. All three of them went back to inspecting the mystery person, who smiled at them.

Harry couldn't work out how a simple mask over the eyes rendered her face entirely unrecognizable, but it did. When he looked away, he couldn't for the life of him picture this new arrival at all. It was the weirdest thing he'd ever come across. Not really an aversion ward, he had no trouble _looking_ at her, he simply couldn't retain any details.

"Who the hell are you?" Tonks demanded.

"Like I said, a friend," their visitor said with a chuckle. "Call me… Agent. That'll do for now."

"All right, _Agent_ ," Tonks said with heavy sarcasm. "How did you get here? And what are you doing here in the first place?"

"Ah, how I got here is classified, and what I'm doing here is helping you with your cult problem," ' _Agent_ ' replied in calm serious tones. Harry felt subconsciously that there was something familiar about her but he couldn't put his finger on what, or why for that matter. It was driving him nuts.

"And how are you going to go about doing that?" Tonks asked. The mystery woman opened her mouth to reply, then blinked out of existence again as a spell went through where she'd been. Reappearing ten feet away she made a gesture at the cultist who had snuck up on them all and who had just appeared in the rocks up on the hillside twenty yards away.

There was a brief glimpse of a rotating circle of weird symbols that flashed into existence around her hand, then the cultist, the rocks surrounding him, and several cubic yards of hillside simply vanished. They gaped at the crater that was all that remained, then looked at her.

"Annoying, aren't they?" she said lightly.

"How the..." Ron ran out of words, his mouth hanging open.

"Magic, of course," ' _Agent_ ' replied. "Not your kind though."

While they were processing that, a wave of what Harry could only call ' _freezing evil_ ' rolled up the hillside from the manor. Even years later he couldn't describe it better than that, nor could anyone who was present at the time. All of them looked to see the entire building was glowing a dull red color, brighter light coming from the windows. The spell-fire had died away abruptly, the defenders suddenly stopping and the attackers diving for cover in the face of this new threat.

"Damn. Looks like they completed whatever it was they were doing," ' _Agent_ ' sighed. She walked past them to stand on a small rise inspecting the scene below them. From this vantage, Harry was startled to see she had a long muscular lizard-like tail protruding from the base of her spine, the end resting on the ground right now. It was scarlet on top, and gold along the underside, colors that made him instantly think of his Hogwarts days.

He, Tonks, and Ron shared a look of confusion. _Who_ or _what_ was this person?

"We don't have long," she said, turning back to them. "The energy buildup isn't going to stop. Call your people, get them to pull back immediately."

"What do you..." Tonks began. ' _Agent_ ' slashed her hand through the air, cutting her off.

"Now! Don't argue, just do it. Get them out of there."

After a long moment of staring at this odd person, Tonks nodded. She pulled out a small token and tapped it with her wand, then lifted it to her lips. "All Aurors, fall back to start position immediately."

They heard dozens of cracks echo around the whole valley for a few seconds as the remaining Aurors apparated out. When it stopped, ' _Agent_ ' nodded in satisfaction. "Thank you. Now, let's stop this getting out of hand."

"How are you planning on doing that?" Ron asked, half standing to peer over the protection of their collection of rocks. The manor house was glowing more brightly and radiating a horrific sensation that made them feel like cold grease was being poured down their backs. Harry shuddered, and he could see Tonks do the same.

"Destroy the manor," the part-reptilian woman replied. "And the surrounding area. More or less what you were planning, but more thorough. Stay in cover." She made a motion and was suddenly holding the biggest fucking gun Harry had ever seen. It was nearly as large as she was, and must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. Even so, she held it as if it was weightless. Yet again, he just stared. Tonks made a small sound like a mouse being stepped on, and Ron froze.

The woman prodded something on the weapon, which caused a couple of small displays to light up, a series of points of light to run down the massive barrel, and a low, ominous hum to start. All three of them exchanged glances, then shuffled discreetly a little further away.

Whatever that thing was, it was clearly very, very dangerous. You didn't need to know about technology to realize _that._

 _'Agent_ ' aimed the massive weapon carefully, peering through a sight on the side. "Ah. There they are," she muttered in a low voice. More loudly, she warned, "Cover your ears," making an adjustment to a control on the thing. They barely had time to slap their hands over their ears before she pulled the trigger.

Even with their ears covered, the noise was appalling. A deep, rumbling roar like a mundane jet engine crossed with a bolt of lightning, it was so loud he could feel it in his chest. The visuals were even more impressive. An actinic beam of violet light, so bright it looked solid and at least six inches across, formed at the muzzle and linked it to the manor. He snapped his head around in time to see it penetrate the remaining wards like they weren't there, do exactly the same to the manor itself, and disappear into the interior. Moments later the beam stopped, but the light show didn't.

Purple-white light radiated from every window in the building, and a moment later a huge fireball of the same unnatural color roiled up through where the roof had been. Almost gracefully the building came apart, small fragments rising in an expanding cloud hundreds of feet into the air, then arcing over to head back down.

' _Agent_ ' made a quick motion and a glowing dome of light formed around them just as the first pieces of shrapnel arrived. Tonks, Harry, and Ron covered their heads as rock fragments rained down, bouncing off the dome with a gonging sound like it was solid metal. The tailed woman simply stood and watched until the shower of former manor stopped nearly a minute later.

"Holy fucking Morgana's _tits_ what the hell was _THAT?!_ " Tonks screamed when the sound finally ceased. "What did you _do?_ "

"Stopped them destroying all life in the UK," the woman replied, not looking away from the crater. She scanned the remains carefully for a while. "Best to be sure," she added in the end, making the gun go back to wherever it had come from in the first place. The dome of light disappeared with a faint _plink_ sound and she took a few steps forward. Raising her hands, she made a series of motions, glowing symbols orbiting them, then pointed at the house with both hands. " _Singularity_ ," she whispered almost inaudibly.

Harry watched in astonishment as an area encompassing the entire foundations of where the manor had been, in a perfect circle some fifty yards in diameter, suddenly contracted towards the middle just too fast to follow the motion visually. A loud thump rolled over them, making him think that whatever it was had also included the air above it, the affected zone being spherical. The remains of the manor, the basement, some outbuildings, and the ground itself, disappeared into nothingness in under a second. All that was left was an intolerably bright pinprick of weirdly black light that winked out moments later.

The oppressive air that had flooded the area since they'd arrived vanished. Complete silence fell, broken by faint birdsong from high above.

"And that's that." ' _Agent_ ' nodded in satisfaction, her hands on her hips, as she surveyed the vast crater that was the only thing to mark the place an enormous house had been. Aside from a few small sheds, one of which was perfectly cut in half right on the edge of the hole. She turned back to them, smiling faintly. "No more cult. Job done."

"Who or what _are_ you?" Tonks yelled at the top of her voice. "How did you do that? What did you _do?_ "

"I'm sorry, but I can't really answer that. Let's just say I was in the area and saw a problem that needed solving." She walked back and knelt down next to Harry, inspecting his wound. "Let's see that burn." Gently lifting his arm, she rotated it. He hissed in pain, now that the adrenaline was wearing off. "Not too bad." Reaching into a pocket in her leather suit, she produced a small box, popping the lid off one handed. Taking out one of the small bone-colored things that it was full of, without ceremony she pressed it to the bare skin on the back of his hand.

"Hey!" he yelped, having been too surprised by her actions to react quickly enough to stop it. She released him as his hand went numb. "What did you do? What was that?"

"Quick healer," the woman explained. Which didn't really explain anything.

"What the hell is… a..." He trailed off even as he was reaching for his wand, feeling the pain abruptly simply stop. Looking down, he watched open-mouthed as his arm healed in seconds, new healthy skin replacing the blistered and reddened mess that had been there moments before. "How..."

"They work very fast," ' _Agent_ ' noted with a small smile. "Here. Enough for all your people. They'll heal anything, but if the patient is seriously wounded they'll need a lot to eat afterwards to replace biomass. Just put them on exposed skin and press until they make a sound." She dropped the closed box into his lap and stood up, her tail lazily waving from side to side in a manner that reminded him of a contented cat.

"Well, I need to go. Nice to meet you all," the woman said pleasantly. "We might meet again if things get out of hand."

"You're not going anywhere, I have a lot of questions to ask," Tonks, who had been staring at Harry's newly healed arm with Ron, suddenly said, pointing her wand at ' _Agent_.'

"Sorry, I really have to be somewhere else," her target said. As Tonks raised her wand, the woman with the tail smirked slightly, saluted them with a flick of a finger to her brow and silently vanished as mysteriously as she'd arrived.

Slowly lowered her wand, Tonks stared, then slumped. "The Director is never going to believe this," she moaned.

"Who _was_ that masked woman?" Ron asked in befuddled tones. All three of them looked at each other, then stood up to inspect the crater.

"I have absolutely no idea," Harry finally sighed. "None whatsoever." He looked at the box in his hand, before turning to his companions. "I suppose we'd better go and get the others, then tell Neville what happened."

"He's never going to believe it," Tonks said again, sounding both enormously confused and very irritated. "Oh, Merlin, the _reports!_ This is going to be worse than clearing up after _you,_ Potter."

"Hey!" Harry looked insulted.

"It's probably his fault in the first place," Ron suggested, smiling a little for the first time in a while.

"Oi! It's not _my_ fault!" Harry snapped. "I have no sodding idea who that was, or where she came from. Or how she did… that!" He pointed at where the manor had been rather indignantly.

"Hmm. Yes, I guess we probably _can_ blame it on him, Ron," Tonks said thoughtfully, also looking at the giant hole in the ground. "After all, this is more or less what normally happens at the end of a PWI operation. Just a little larger than usual."

"Prats," Harry muttered, shaking his head. Sometimes he wondered about his friends.

At least Hermione would understand it wasn't his fault. Whatever the hell had happened…

* * *

 ****  
"How did things go, Harry?" His best and definitely-not-going-to-blame-him-for-mysterious-women-with-tails-and-insanely-big-guns friend asked as he stumbled into her flat and slumped on the sofa. She had, with her usual impeccable timing, already got a cup of coffee waiting for him. He took it with grateful hands and drank most of it in one go.

"I've had a very weird day, Hermione," he sighed.

She sat beside him, Crookshanks jumping onto her lap and curling up. The cat fixed his eyes on Harry's face.

"Tell me about it," she urged.

So he did.

Even when he finally got to bed, he couldn't shake the feeling that her damn cat had been grinning at him the entire time.

Bloody cat. He was very glad he had an owl.

Looking over at where Hedwig was dozing on her perch, he smiled faintly, then fell asleep. He didn't notice the owl open her eyes, look at him, make a small sound that gave the impression of amusement, and settle down again.


	9. The Vigilante

The sound of a muffled scream in the middle distance caught her sensitive hearing, making her look up from what she was doing, then tip her head slightly as she listened intently.

The sound came again, somewhere within around three hundred yards or so, she judged. Other sounds suggested there was violence going on, most likely from the criminals that still infested the city no matter what the authorities did. It was, unfortunately, a fact of life. With a slight degree of irritation, she decided that once again it was something she was going to have to get involved with personally, since those same authorities were not as efficient as some might wish. Even her own friends and acquaintances complained about it, ironic as at least a couple of them _were_ those authorities.

However, by and large they were restricted to what they could do.

She was not.

She had numerous advantages which they didn't, including a far better ability at stealth honed by years of practice, and a certain ruthlessness which most of her local friends, as much as she liked and admired them, lacked. With one notable exception, of course. An exception who had helped her on more than one occasion, and one that would probably approve of what she did.

With an internal flicker of amusement, she wondered if that exception realized how much they were admired by her. Possibly not, she didn't make a habit of remarking on it, but she hoped that when she _did,_ it was appreciated.

No matter. It wasn't important in the grand scheme of things. She had a job to do, and people to protect from those who would prey on them.

Making sure she had all her equipment ready, including her mask and weapons, she silently opened the window and made her exit, disappearing into the darkness of the London night.

A few minutes later, several muffled shots rang out. A scream at a quite different pitch was heard, accompanied by a harsh sound of glee, then staggering footsteps echoed through the streets, fading into the distance, until they terminated in a very faint thump.

One that sounded an awful lot like a body hitting the ground…

Then all was still and quiet once more. 

* * *

"That's six in the last _month!_ " Neville Longbottom, Director of the DMLE, waved a piece of paper at the other people in his office. "Every one of them a wanted and violent criminal, every one of them taken out by..." He examined the sheet for a moment, then carried on, "A hollow point .357 bullet fired from what our friends in the Met tell us is most likely a suppressed handgun, probably a Glock 33. Whatever that is."

"It's a polymer framed sub-compact pistol manufactured in Austria by the Glock firearms company. They make a large number of handguns which are very popular in both civilian and law enforcement circles around the world. They're reliable, accurate, and cost effective, and are simple to maintain and service. They also have a very neat trigger-operated safety mechanism which is…" Tonks trailed off as everyone in the room stared at her. Her hair flickered slightly darker than its normal cheery pink, showing she was a little embarrassed.

Neville, after a long moment, shook his head and resumed his diatribe. "Leaving Tonks's frankly disturbing enthusiasm for Mundane firearms out of it, the _point_ is that someone is going around shooting random criminals in the face with a weapon that hardly anyone in _our_ world knows anything about." He glanced at the woman, who shrugged slightly, with a small smirk. "Which is probably a good thing. Whoever's doing it is an appallingly good shot, too, since we've only found one of these bullet things that actually missed their target."

He poked the small collection of metal fragments that were in a plastic bag on his desk with one finger, shaking his head. "Not a drop of magic, but as lethal as anything I've ever seen," he added. "Even the ones who didn't get killed on the spot bled out only minutes later. The Met forensics people say the… ammunition, I believe?"

Tonks nodded.

"Is something called ' _Ranger SXT_ ' which according to their information is about as horrific a thing as I've ever come across. And completely illegal in the UK. As is the weapon. Or weapons." He held up the report, which had been produced very quietly by some people at the Metropolitan Police as a favor to their Wizarding colleagues. "From the recovered evidence there appear to be two pistols being used. Whether that means there are two assailants or only one with two guns, I have no idea."

Dropping the report next to the evidence bag, he leaned back in his chair and regarded his guests. "So what do we have? One, or possibly two, vigilantes, armed with a Mundane firearm loaded with ammunition designed specifically to cause maximum damage to a person, who are hunting down random muggers and other violent criminals and… dealing with them. Permanently. We don't know who they are, where they come from, where they go, why they're doing this, or _any_ useful information at all. No one sees them come, no one sees them leave, no one _sees them at all_."

He fumed to himself for a moment as glances were exchanged, but no one else dared interrupt.

"The _only_ description we've had, and it was from a single report by a victim of one Washton Oakes, professional murderer, who met a particularly grisly end at the hands of our friend or friends, was ' _Glowing eyes in the darkness, seven feet off the ground_.' Which is more than a little worrying if it's even vaguely accurate, as it implies something not entirely human is behind this." He gazed at another report, idly tapping it with one finger. "Although considering the state the poor woman was in when the Auror patrol found her, we can probably take that statement with a very large pinch of salt. I hope."

He paused, then finished, "We need to work out how to find them and stop them. I'm open to ideas."

There was silence for a minute or so after he stopped talking. Eventually, after clearing his throat, his old friend, a man who was definitely touched in the head but was even so, or possibly because of this, oddly good at his work, somewhat tentatively asked, "Do we actually _need_ to do anything? I mean, this guy is taking out people who your lot would probably do the same thing to if they caught them, right?"

"The Auror force does not summarily execute people in the street, Potter," Neville sighed.

"Well, not all the time," Tonks helpfully added. "Sometimes they shoot first, we shoot back, and things sort of..." She trailed off again as he gave her a look. "Sorry, Boss."

"Don't call me boss, and try to keep your more bloodthirsty urges under control, Tonks," he sighed. She grinned as did Potter and the equally mad Weasley next to him.

"Harry's got a point, though, Nev," Ron put in. "Whoever this person is, they've only gone after proper bastards and have saved at least a dozen or so lives in the last few months. That last guy had killed at least three people we know of, all over the country."

"That is not, in fact, the point." Neville glared at him. "The _point_ is that a lot of people in the Wizengamot are getting nervous about the way a ' _muggle fireleg_ ' to use the terms your own father would put it in is being used to very efficiently kill wizards. Yes, they're all fuckwits of the first order, and yes, they'd almost certainly meet a similar end sooner or later as a result of their chosen career, but at a very minimum this is politically a nightmare."

He glowered at them all. "The Minister isn't happy. You know how some elements of the government tend to get all funny about the Mundanes. On the one hand they're convinced that they're third class citizens at best, and amusing animals at worst, and on the other hand they're completely terrified of them. We're outnumbered thousands to one and anyone with the slightest inkling of intelligence already knows that if the Mundanes ever seriously decided that Wizards were a threat, we'd be completely fucked."

"Most of the Wizengamot doesn't have the slightest inkling of intelligence, though," Harry chuckled.

"You know that and I know that, but they're convinced they're the cream of the crop as you also know," Neville sighed. "And when they're scared they tend towards doing the stupidest thing they can come up with. The Minister is good at heading off their more excessive daft ideas but she's got her limits. Sooner or later someone who has no idea about… well, anything, really… is going to do something stupid in a way that the Mundane authorities _or_ us can't hide and then the shit really will hit the fan."

"And you think that proving that a gun is at least as good as a wand at killing someone is too much provocation?" Tonks asked.

Neville nodded. "I do. I'm not all that familiar with firearms but I did some research, and to be honest the things terrify me. Even a handgun out-ranges any spell I've ever heard of by hundreds of feet at least, and you can't dodge a bullet. What a rifle would do…" He shuddered. "No, I'd prefer not having those around the place if we can avoid it."

"You know the world record distance for a sniper is currently something like one and a half miles?" Tonks asked, smiling a little.

He glared at her.

"No, I did not. Please stop helping."

After a moment when he was sure she wasn't going to add to her observations, although the small smile didn't go away, he carried on, "We have no idea if the vigilante is a Wizard, or a Squib, or heaven help us a Mundane who has somehow managed to work out how to access our world. Most people are sure that can't happen, but it wouldn't be the first time. Our defenses aren't perfect as we found out from Hermione's friendly priest." He thought back to the several conversations he'd had with the cheerful and appallingly intelligent and well informed Italian, who had access to a lot of information he _himself_ didn't. Finding out that most if not all of the intelligence authorities on the planet were at least as well informed about the goings-on in the wizarding world as he was had come as something of a shock. Although it _did_ explain a couple of the more puzzling cases in the archives…

"Neither do we know if they're using magic to hide themselves, or some form of technology. Or just good old fashioned skill. There's no trace of magic on the recovered evidence that we can detect, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything. It might be an invisibility cloak, or any number of other methods. And we don't even know if this person is human at all. Although that leads to some even worse possibilities." He folded his hands on the desk and inspected the three people.

"Basically, we know nothing useful at all. We need to stop this happening, and at this point I don't really care how. The Aurors are out of their depth, very few of them know anything about Mundane weaponry, and two months of investigation has turned up absolutely nothing useful. So, against my better judgment, and despite common sense shouting at me to find some other way, I'm going to let you two lunatics loose on this case."

Ron and Harry looked at each other, grinned slightly, then turned the smirks on him. He sighed heavily. " _Please_ try not to start another small war. Once was enough. And stop blowing up buildings, it's getting tedious sorting out the aftermath of one of your little adventures."

Harry opened his mouth and Neville held up a finger. "No. You know full well what normally happens, Potter. Just don't do it. No Weasley Special Projects, no ' _Oops, I missed_ ,' no ' _Hey, I have a cunning plan!_ ,' and _definitely no Brown Note Potion!_ Every time you insane people use that damn stuff things get out of hand. Just investigate _quietly_ for once, will you? For me?" He looked beseechingly at the pair, who exchanged a look again before nodding.

"Thank you. Tonks, you're assigned to help them. _Try_ to stop him pulling a Potter, please. I'm getting tired of explaining things to the Minister."

"I'll do my best," she replied, with a dubious glance at the two men. "But you know how they are."

"I do, all too well. And I know you're at least as mad. But I'm out of options, so get out there and find this person. Stop them, persuade them to go somewhere else, buy them off, shoot them, I genuinely don't care at this point. _Just get them to stop leaving dead muggers all over my territory!_ "

"Sir!" Tonks said, jumping to her feet and giving him a picture perfect salute, which made him put his head in his hands and moan. Potter was rubbing off on her.

"Maybe we should ask Sirius to help out?" Harry mused out loud. Neville froze in horror. "He's back in the country and was complaining that he was bored. And he's always thought PWI was a good lark."

"For Merlin's sake, Harry, are you _trying_ to give me a coronary?" Neville demanded, raising his head and fixing his old schoolmate with a basilisk stare. "DO NOT INVOLVE SIRIUS BLACK! He's like you, Tonks, and Weasley added together and turned up as far as it will go."

Harry grinned as Neville fumed. "We're _still_ picking little pieces of glass out of strange places from the last time Sirius decided to ' _help_ ' so just leave him out of it."

"Oh, all right, but he's going to be really disappointed." Harry looked mildly upset.

"Do I _look_ like someone who cares?" Neville retorted. "I can live with the disappointment. I'm not sure I could live with his help." He pushed the packet of information across the desk, Ron collecting it. "Get out of here, you're making me nervous just thinking about what might happen. Find this person and stop them. Hermione's back, isn't she?"

Harry nodded.

"Ask her for some ideas. She's smarter than both of you put together and is a lot less irresponsible. She at least won't think it's a brilliant idea to combine a portable hole with a sewage transfiguration spell in the middle of the street..."

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" Ron sniggered.

"For certain values of ' _worked_ ,' possibly," Neville sighed. "Although as usual your ' _solution_ ' was probably worse than the actual problem." Wearily waving at the door, he added, "Go on. Leave me in peace to dread what happens next. Close the door on your way out."

All three of them got up and headed for the exit. "Sure you still want to work for him, Tonks?" Harry asked in a loud whisper. "He's awfully depressing sometimes. We're a lot more fun to work with, and we pay better."

Neville threw a coffee cup at him, making him duck, laugh like a lunatic, and dive out the door followed by the other two who were grinning. " _STOP TRYING TO STEAL TONKS, POTTER!_ " he shouted after them.

All he got back was a snicker as the door closed.

Sighing again, he rested his forehead on the desk and wondered why he bothered. 

* * *

****  
"Any ideas?" Sirius asked as he put the last of the pages down, then picked up a glass of brandy and sipped it.

"Not really, no," Harry shrugged. "Not yet. We've gone around all the crime scenes and looked at everything, run all the diagnostic spells we could think of including some Hermione Specials, and nothing stands out. Nothing that's not already in the reports, at least. Definitely a Mundane firearm and the evidence from the Met checks out as far as we can tell."

"We're thinking it's probably only one shooter, though," Ron added thoughtfully as he inspected the plate of sandwiches he'd acquired from the table with a slight frown. "Tonks figured out the trajectory of the bullets in the last shooting and they seemed to come from only about a foot or so apart, which could be someone holding a gun in each hand. Probably not two people very close together either."

"The problem with that," Tonks said from the other side of the room where she was lying back in a very comfortable-looking chair and staring at the ceiling reflectively, "is that using two guns at once isn't easy. Sure, it's _possible_ , but despite what the movies show it takes either quite a lot of practice or blind luck to consistently hit the same target with a gun in each hand. And whoever this is, they're really good with a pistol. So I doubt it's blind luck."

"A professional, then," Sirius suggested. She nodded.

"That's what I think. Which tends to eliminate most Wizards, since there aren't many who even know what a gun _is_ , never mind would ever learn to use one at all. At least in this country. Might be different abroad."

"A Wizard hit-man would be fairly terrifying," the older man quipped. "Mundane ones are bad enough."

"How do you know?" Harry asked.

Sirius grinned deviously. "There was this girl I met when I was in Goa..." he replied. "Oh, the stories she had. Anyway, that's for another time. Maybe it isn't a Wizard at all, then?"

"We're leaning that way," Ron put in, having finished the sandwiches in short order. He put the empty plate down next to his chair, where it silently vanished moments later. "A Squib makes more sense. They'd be able to get into Diagon Alley easily, and if they live in the Mundane world like most of them do, would probably know about guns. And could well hold a grudge or something."

"Wouldn't blame them," Sirius muttered, rubbing his chin in thought. "But if that was the case, why go after criminals on the street? Why not start knocking off some rich bastard who's the sort of person who looks down on Squibs?"

All three of his guests shrugged. "No idea," Harry admitted.

"Hmm."

They sat in silence for a while. Sirius slowly drank his brandy. "The other problem is where did they get the guns and ammunition, I suppose," he finally said. "I know that the Mundane government has put a lot of effort into banning most firearms since that thing a few years back up in Scotland. Where does our helpfully violent vigilante get their equipment? That special stuff they're using comes from the States, although the guns are made in Austria. Some sort of connection with America?"

"That makes sense, but so far we can't find anything," Tonks nodded. "We've looked. No American wizards have turned up at just the right moment, or Squibs for that matter, not that we can locate. It was a bit much to hope for, I admit, but we did look. So whatever the source is, it's more indirect. Possibly some sort of link with the London criminal scene is one idea, but again we can't figure out why they're going after Wizarding criminals in that case."

"They don't want the competition?" Ron suggested half-facetiously.

"Not impossible," Sirius allowed after some reflection. "I've heard of weirder things. But it doesn't smell right to me."

"Me either," Harry nodded slowly. "All the evidence tells me that whoever is behind this is targeting violent criminals that should already be in prison and stopping them. Every single one of them has multiple assaults and often murders to their name, all of them were in the process of committing another assault, and _only_ people like that have been attacked. It's like some sort of hard-core version of a Mundane superhero from those comic things Fred likes so much."

"Owlman, or something like that?" Sirius grinned.

"Batman, I think," Ron replied, frowning. "They've got weird imaginations, those Mundanes."

"Anyway, it's more like this is a personal vendetta against criminals in general, rather than someone looking for specific people," Tonks put in, nodding a little too. "I agree with Harry. And to be honest I'm not entirely sure we shouldn't be standing aside. I mean, yes, violence is bad and all that, but it's sure effective." She grinned briefly. "This method certainly stops repeat offenses."

Sirius laughed. "I doubt the Director sees it that way. Or the Minister."

"Not really," Harry chuckled. "But it's mostly the others, the old families who are getting all nervous about being attacked in their beds by ravening hordes of gun-wielding muggles."

With a smirk, Sirius said, "I suspect the Goblins are doing a roaring trade in anti-firearm wards."

"Probably." His godson shrugged with a smirk. "More power to them, if they want to suck some of those people dry it'll serve them right."

"Maybe it's actually a Goblin?" Ron said with a slight smile. "A lot of them _really_ don't like Wizards, or anyone else. Perhaps they're doing something about that and going after people no one would really miss."

"Unless there's three of them standing on each other's shoulders I can't see how you get seven foot tall assailant with glowing eyes," Tonks snickered.

"Yeah, good point." Ron shrugged. "In that case I've got no idea."

"That's the problem, none of us do," Harry sighed. "And there was another one last night. Only about two hundred yards from my flat, actually. Dead as a door nail when the Aurors found him. One of the top ten wanted men in the UK, as it happens, wanted for six rapes, two murders, and more assaults than I can count."

"So no real loss to society," Sirius commented wryly.

"Not as such, no. I doubt anyone will mourn the bastard," Harry agreed. "But it's embarrassing the DMLE since the bugger had been in the area for over a month and no one noticed until our friend got him."

"Ouch." His godfather snickered. "That's going to cause red faces."

"Just a bit."

"What does Hermione think about it?" the older man asked curiously.

Harry scratched his upper lip, looking slightly embarrassed. "Um… I haven't asked her yet."

"Why not?" Sirius asked, staring at him like he was mad. "She's far smarter that you are."

"Oh, thanks very much," Harry retorted.

"I didn't mean it like that, Harry," Sirius soothed. "She's far smarter than _anyone_ is. The girl's terrifying, I've never met anyone that brilliant. Even your mother would have been appalled, and _she_ was a genius. What I meant is that if there's anyone who could probably just think it through and work it out, it's our Hermione. I'm surprised you haven't asked her, that's all."

"I wanted to see if we could do it _without_ asking her for help," Harry sighed, looking despondent. "I love that woman, but sometimes she makes me feel like a trained chimp having a bad day."

Ron and Tonks both nodded.

Sirius chuckled. "I do know what you mean, lad. Crazy-smart women have that effect, and she'd the most impressive one I've ever met in that regard. Most other regards too. You should definitely marry her."

Harry glared at him as his friends burst out laughing. "Marry Hermione? Are you _nuts?_ She'd end up strangling me because I was too stupid or something."

"That girl loves you, you idiot, she'd never hurt you. But I agree, you're not enough challenge for her." Looking thoughtful, Sirius tapped a finger on his nearly empty brandy glass. "She needs someone rich, probably older, witty, good with practical matters, rich did I mention that, devastatingly good looking, and rich."

Harry gave him a narrow look. "And I suppose you have someone in mind who happens to embody those characteristics?"

Sirius beamed at him, while Tonks was silently heaving with laughter and Ron was grinning. "I may well do, my boy. I may well do."

"Idiot. And don't call me my boy, you know I don't like it. Bad memories."

"Fair enough. Lad." The older man smirked as Harry sighed. "Joking aside, talk to the girl. She'll have some good ideas, she always does. And you've got nothing right now."

"True." Harry shook his head. "We're running in circles, without any real evidence for..."

He stopped talking as they all heard a muffled _bang_ from somewhere fairly close through the open window, the sound carrying well in the early autumn night. "That sounded like..." he started to say, only to be interrupted by two more identical sounds and a yell of anguish.

"Quick, it's only about two streets over!" Tonks cried as she jumped to her feet and headed for the door. Both the younger men followed immediately, as did Sirius, all of them with their wands in their hands. They shot out of the front door of Sirius's house, looked around, then charged off to the right as she shouted, "That way!"

Moments later they rounded a corner into a wide alley and stopped dead, Sirius nearly running Harry down. "Ah," the older man said, as they studied the scene. "Two more, by the looks of it."

"Check him," Tonks snapped, pointing at a whimpering wizard who was cowering in the corner next to a drainpipe, while she cautiously approached the pair of motionless figures that were lying face down on the cobbles. Ron was carefully turning on the spot, his wand leading, as he inspected the entire scene, including the roof line three stories above them. Sirius moved to the living person, who smelled strongly of alcohol, and quickly ran some simple medical spells.

"He's fine, just drunk and terrified," he reported a few seconds later. "Shut up, they're dead," he added in a lower voice as the middle aged wizard kept making noises better suited for a frightened three year old. "Pull yourself together, man, this is embarrassing."

Harry checked one body while Tonks did the same to the other one. "Mine's done for," he said.

"Mine too," she grumbled. Rolling the man over, she shook her head after a quick inspection. "Two shots to the chest. Must have died almost instantly."

"This guy took one right in the throat," Harry commented, looking at the corpse. "Not a lot of it left."

"That's a real mess," Ron said over his shoulder, his face showing distaste. "Quick, though. Looks like a reducto got him, almost."

"Yep. There's almost nothing holding his head on, look." Harry prodded the head and watched as it rolled loosely from side to side, making Tonks sigh.

"Stop that. Playing with the dead bodies is just weird."

"Hey, I know that one," Sirius said as he came over and looked for himself. "Not a nice person at all. Um… Xavier something… Smitling? No, Smitely, that's it. Xavier Smitely. Nasty piece of work, he made a career of relieving people of their valuables and their lives in that order. Liked to see them twitch or something."

"How do you happen to know someone like that?" Ron asked suspiciously.

"Misspent youth," Sirius chuckled.

"You _always_ say that," Harry complained.

"I had a very misspent youth," the older man shrugged. "Misspent it a lot. All over the place."

"So I heard from mum," Tonks muttered. "This one looks familiar too, pretty sure he's wanted for multiple rapes and general thievery. I'll have to check the records."

They looked up as two Aurors came panting into the alley, wands raised and faces severe. "Halt in the name of… Tonks, what the hell are you doing here?" one of them said.

"My job, idiot," she snapped back. "What kept you? Five minutes? That's terrible response time, we were here in under thirty seconds and I'm not even on duty."

Both of them looked annoyed and embarrassed in equal measure. "What about those three?" the other Auror asked, indicating Harry, Ron, and Sirius, all of whom had their wands in hand but discreetly out of sight, something the new arrivals appeared to miss. "Potter being mixed up in this is worrying."

"Nothing's on fire, though," his colleague said with a smirk. "Can't have been here long."

"Funny, very funny," Harry grumbled. "The Director has us consulting on this case."

"Man's mad," the first Auror muttered under his breath, but shut up when Tonks glared at him. "So what do we have?"

"Two dead muggers, one live victim who _won't stop whimpering_ ," Tonks replied with an icy glare directed at the so far unnamed wizard, "and nothing else. Except for that smell, which is characteristic of a firearm being used."

Both Aurors sniffed, then exchanged a look. "So it's definitely our man. Three neat little holes in these two just adds to that. No sign of him though. Sirius, see if you can get that idiot's name, and for Merlin's sake get him to shut up. You two, check that side of the alley, we'll take this one. Look for _anything_ out of the ordinary, no matter how small it is. At this point we need whatever we can find."

The two Aurors nodded and began carefully scanning the ground and wall on the left side of the alley. Harry, Ron, and Tonks did the same on the other side. Sirius knelt down beside the now-silent but still quivering near-victim and started talking quietly to him.

Twenty minutes later, all of them grouped together again. "Nothing. No trace of footsteps, no residual magic, no marks on the walls, nothing to indicate anyone was ever here," Auror number one said in resignation. "We didn't pass anyone on the way here either and this alley is a dead end, so whoever it was is fast on their feet. Or used a broom. But we didn't see anyone flying either."

"Neither did we and we were here in under half a minute," Harry replied, looking up, then back at them. "Odd."

"Invisibility cloak, a fast broom, and someone who's really skilled?" Ron suggested.

"Maybe. But something doesn't quite add up with that..."

"We found these," Tonks put in, holding out her hand. Three brass casings glinted in the light from their wands. "Same as the other cases. But only three, so whoever it was didn't miss."

"We only heard three shots too," Ron noted, causing her to nod.

"They sounded much quieter than they should have been which also suggests a suppressor was used," she replied.

"A suppressor?" Auror Two queried, looking puzzled.

"Mundane firearms use a fast burning powder to propel a small chunk of metal at ferocious speeds," she explained, turning to him. "Much, much faster than any spell. It makes quite a lot of noise and a bright flash when it's fired. A suppressor is a device that can be added to certain weapons to reduce the noise and flash. It's not perfect so they're still quite loud, but it does cut down the sound a lot. We were close enough to hear it easily but if we'd been further away it might have been missed."

"Someone in one of these buildings reported hearing a strange sound, which is why we turned up," the Auror explained, waving his hand to the side. "We didn't hear anything ourselves, but the report was similar to the previous cases so we came as fast as we could."

"Which wasn't all that fast," she commented, causing them to give her a slightly annoyed look.

"We were nearly half a mile away, Tonks!"

"Run faster next time," she suggested with a smirk. Turning to Sirius as they spluttered, she went on, "Any luck?"

"His name is Jonathan Punt, he's an apothecary, and he wants to go home," the man said as he stood up. "And he claims he saw a flying giant with glowing gold eyes who spat fire at those men."

"A flying giant..." Harry repeated slowly.

"That's what he said."

"It were huge," the wizard, who was sitting on the ground with his knees clasped to his chest, muttered. "Great big thing, ten feet tall. All dark like, with these weird eyes that looked spooky and angry. It made a loud noise and spat out flames, then those men screamed and fell down. Then it flew away over the buildings. Didn't make a sound other than the bangs, like fireworks."

"Ten feet tall?" Ron queried.

"At least. Eyes were right up there, above a tall man's head by half or more."

"Did you see what it was holding?" Tonks asked carefully.

He shook his head. "No, too dark. Just **_BANG!_** And down they went." He shouted the word and made them all twitch.

"What was it wearing?" Harry asked. "And where did it stand?"

"Couldn't see clothes," the man replied nervously. "Maybe black robes? Makes sense, they'd be invisible in this dark. It were standing about two feet to your right and five back."

Harry moved to the position indicated. "Here?"

"That's it. Right there."

He looked down, brightening his wand, while Tonks and Ron came over and bent over, doing the same. "No footprints, not even a mark from the hem of a robe," he finally stated.

"Can't see anything either," Tonks sighed. She straightened up and turned to the wizard, who was slowly calming down although he was very pale still. "Are you _sure_ it was here?"

"Sure as you're standing there. Eyes were right there, about… maybe three feet above his head?" He pointed to Harry, who looked up. "Fire came from about two feet lower down. I think." The man shrank back as all of them looked at him. "I were hiding then."

"Wonderful," Ron muttered very quietly. "Think any of that is even vaguely right?"

"It's more than we've got up to now, so I hope so," Harry replied equally quietly. "Not that it helps much." He turned back to Punt, who was gradually relaxing as he recovered. "You're _certain_ it flew away?"

The man actually managed to look indignant. "I am that, yes. Flew right up and over that building there," he replied, pointing. They all followed his finger to the right. "Quick, too, it were gone in a second. Strangest thing I've seen in me life."

"Did it use a broom?"

"No, it had wings. I think… yeah, pretty sure it had wings." He stretched his arms widely. "More than that across."

They exchanged looks. "Wings?"

"Wings," he insisted. "All feathery."

"What color were the feathers?" Sirius asked, fascinated.

Punt opened his mouth, then stopped. After several seconds of puzzlement, he slowly shook his head. "Don't rightly remember. I know there _were_ feathers, but damned if I can think what they looked like."

Everyone stared at him, then at each other, then as one looked upwards. "Confundus or something?" Ron said, sounding confused.

"Maybe… Not a version I'm familiar with though," Tonks finally replied. She sighed. "We're not going to find anything helpful here. Take this man to St Mungos and get him checked out, and have them check for any confundus or obliviation spells. Or anything at all."

The two Aurors nodded, one of them going over to Punt and heaving him to his feet. "Come on, Mr Punt, let's get you seen to," he said.

The still slightly shaking wizard nodded. "Guess I'm lucky, though," he commented, looking at the two bodies. "If it weren't for that thing, it would be me there on the floor."

That seemed to be likely, they all acknowledged as they shared a look. As the Aurors lead him off, then apparated away with a pop a few seconds later, Tonks shook her head. "This is getting ridiculous," she complained. "We nearly had him, and all we have to show for it is three shell casings, two dead criminals, and a tall story of a flying giant with feathers and glowing eyes, but the witness can't remember anything else that's useful. And there's _still_ no evidence of magic. Which doesn't make any _sense_."

"It's a puzzler," Sirius agreed. "Come on, let's go back to my house and have something other than sandwiches to eat, and give it some more thought. And Harry, will you _please_ consult Hermione? She's bound to have an idea or two."

"I'll do it first thing when I get back," his godson nodded.

"Good." They headed back in the direction they'd come from, much more slowly this time.

"Just as a matter of record, the Director _did_ tell us not to involve Sirius, you realize," Tonks said calmly after about half a minute.

"Oh, he was only joking about that, I'm sure," Harry assured her, equally calmly. Behind them, Ron glanced at Sirius, who was smirking a little, and laughed under his breath. "But to be on the safe side, probably best not to tell him..." 

* * *

Satisfied that once again she'd helped out, she carefully closed the window, put her equipment away in its place, and relaxed with a quick meal. Soon she was asleep, contented that things were progressing in the right direction.

Good people were safe.

Bad people were not.

All was as it should be. 

* * *

"What did Hermione say?" Neville asked. Harry shook his head.

"She's thinking about it," he replied as he took the mug of coffee that Tonks handed him, the other one going to Ron, before she also sat. "I expect she'll have a fifty page report on it in a day or two telling us all the places we went wrong, how we went wrong, how we need to improve, and so on. You know, the usual."

Neville chuckled. "I have some idea," he replied. "Good, perhaps she'll be able to point us in the right direction."

"Any more from that Punt chap?" Ron asked curiously.

Their old friend picked up a familiar looking medical report, scanned it, shook his head, then handed it to the red-head who took it and started reading. "Nothing useful. He had too much alcohol in his blood for the doctor's liking, but otherwise was in good health. No real injuries, only some abrasions on his neck where it looks like Smitely grabbed him, and a mark on his chest where one of them pushed a wand into it as far as they can tell. That matches the statement he gave when he'd been sobered up a little. And they say there's no indication of any memory modification spells of any sort present."

"So why can't he remember what color the feathers of this mysterious flying giant's wings were?" Harry asked.

"Because it doesn't exist?" Neville suggested with a sigh. "He _was_ pissed as a newt after all. He might have seen a pigeon or an owl or something and just made it all up in his head. Might not even realize it. That happens a lot with witnesses."

"Have you tried a pensieve?" Harry asked.

"Alcohol tends to make them very unreliable, unfortunately," Neville shrugged. "We did try but it was a mess. Nothing particularly helpful was found. _Possibly_ some indication of a large figure, but it's difficult to separate a real memory from what he _thought_ he saw in someone that inebriated. We can't use it."

"Damn." He sipped some coffee and thought. "That was the closest we've come to anything and we're no better off."

"Apparently not." Neville picked up his own coffee and stared into it, steam rising to surround his face. "All we can do is keep working on it, I suppose. We might get lucky."

"And at least two more extremely dangerous and unpleasant people who should already have been in prison are off the street," Tonks commented.

They looked at her, then each other, before nodding. "Not exactly the correct method, but there is that," Neville allowed. "Considering how small the Wizarding community is, we do seem to have a lot of criminals," he added a moment later, with another sigh. "Someone should work out why one day and see if there's a good solution to it. I'm sure the Mundanes don't have as many thugs per capita as we do."

"I don't think they possibly could have, or it would be total anarchy on the streets," Harry nodded. Ron finished reading the medical report and tossed it back onto Neville's desk before retrieving his mug and taking a long drink from it.

"At least we haven't had a death cult since those lunatics up in Scotland," the Weasley man pointed out with a smile. "Maybe we'll avoid that particular problem for a while."

"I certainly hope so," Neville replied, shaking his head. "Undoubtedly I'll be disappointed, though. There's something in the psyche of the average wizard that seems drawn to that sort of rubbish, I think. Considering how regularly they pop up."

"That's just being defeatist, Nev," Harry said cheerfully. "One day we'll figure out how to stop them completely."

"And until then, you and Ron can blow them up at the taxpayer's expense," Tonks snickered.

Harry laughed while Neville glared at all three of them.

"That is _far_ too close to reality to be funny," he snapped. "Why I let you idiots out on the street I still have no idea. You should be buried in a mine somewhere where you can't do any damage and only let out at Christmas for a few hours."

Harry grinned at him. Finishing his coffee, he stood up and put the mug down on the desk. "We'd better get back to work. See you later, Nev."

As he followed the other two out the door, he said over his shoulder, "Sirius says hi, by the way."

He shut it just in time to hear ceramic shatter on the other side. " _POTTER!_ " Neville shouted, making him snicker, then follow his friends out of the building. 

* * *

Six days later, and three more aborted muggings which produced between them five more bodies of people who were generally considered bad news by everyone, Harry was beginning to wonder what the hell was going on. Many of their contacts in the criminal underworld, which was indeed far larger than one would expect considering how small the number of wizards really was, were starting to panic. Crime was rapidly dropping as the perpetrators of that crime decided that their fortunes lay elsewhere.

On the whole this was good, but it was still worrying, since they were no closer to working out who was behind the whole thing. Hermione had absorbed all their information and sat and thought about it for a while, but so far hadn't come up with any explanation. He was certain that sooner or later she would, she always did, but even his best friend had her limits. And whoever was responsible for the vigilante actions was _extremely_ good at hiding their tracks. No spell anyone could come up with had found _anything_.

They'd even resorted to patrolling the likely areas the person they were after was active in on brooms, with invisibility cloaks of their own, but even though one of those attacks had happened while this was in progress, no perpetrator had been discovered. The shot had been heard, Aurors and Harry's small team had converged instantly on the site, and mere seconds after the incident arrived to find a still-warm body bleeding on the ground, a victim who was running like the devil was after her two streets away, having apparently forgotten she was a fully qualified witch and could apparate, and nothing else other than one shell casing.

Not a sign of the vigilante, no foot prints, no magical traces, no witnesses, nothing.

It was very, very annoying and equally puzzling.

Harry was beginning to suspect that someone had either some extremely advanced technology they'd never encountered before, which was certainly not something he'd dismiss out of hand bearing in mind the advances in the last few years, or magic beyond his experience. He couldn't see any other plausible explanation. The vigilante came and went seemingly at will, right through their patrols, without leaving a trace. The only witnesses were a few of the former victims, and although the ' _glowing eyes_ ' part was constant, nothing _else_ was. One more such person had said their savior had flown away but couldn't remember if they had wings or not. So that was more or less a dead end.

The whole thing was most irritating.

Another week passed. Nine more would-be muggers and rapists met an abrupt end. Crime rates plummeted to levels not seen since the forties. Dyed in the wool hardened criminals retired to the country en masse, deciding that a life as a sheep farmer or something was preferable to being struck down by the mysterious vigilante who never missed.

Questions were asked in the Wizengamot. No real answers were to be had, and despite all the sound and fury, as usual very little actually happened. Minister Bones was able to keep a lid on the more reactionary elements of the Wizarding world, and the obvious detail that whoever it was only went after vicious criminals did prevent precipitous action. No one was actually _happy_ about it, least of all those self-same criminals, but as usual wizards managed to get used to something bizarre in short order as it didn't directly affect _them,_ which was a depressingly common thing.

More time passed. More bodies turned up, although in smaller and smaller quantities at longer intervals, mostly due to the smarter criminals leaving the area and the life style while those that remained tended to have a short shelf life.

Then, one day just over a month after the Punt case, it just stopped.

No more bodies were found. No shots were heard. The vigilante, whoever they were, had apparently disappeared as mysteriously as they'd arrived.

Most people heaved a sigh of relief when a couple more weeks passed with no cases of dead muggers, particularly those who plied that trade. Not that at the moment they _did_ ply that trade, the ones being left generally being of the opinion that they weren't idiots.

Street crime had bottomed out at historically low levels, and showed no signs of being likely to rise in the near future.

No one ever worked out who had been behind it all. After a while, they stopped looking. 

* * *

"It's absolutely bizarre," Harry sighed, picking at his food. He glanced up at his friend who was watching him with a faint smile over her plate, and shook his head. "We still don't know who did it, or why, or how they managed to get away so cleanly. I doubt we ever will unless you figure it out."

"I did my best, Harry, but I have my limits," Hermione replied with a fond look. "There was very little evidence. I would suggest that it was most likely some unusual magic, possibly a family spell of some sort very few people are aware of, that allowed the vigilante to hide so effectively from you all."

"We sort of worked that out ourselves, but it's good to have you confirm the idea," he admitted. "This is delicious, by the way."

"Thank you, it's one of my favorites." She took a forkful of the food and ate it, then swallowed. "Look on the bright side, though. You and Ron earned a lot of money, and did manage to track down half a dozen serious criminals as a side effect of the entire thing. Nearly two dozen of the worst sort of violent thug are permanently off the street, and the crime levels through the entire Wizarding world in London at least, and from what I've heard most of Britain, have fallen to levels no one's ever seen before."

"That's true," he nodded.

"On the whole, I think things worked out fairly well, if you ignore the bloodshed. And considering who the people who shed that blood are, it's not all bad. At least half of them would have spent the rest of their lives in Azkaban if they'd been caught, and that ghastly place is a prolonged death sentence no matter how you look at it. A bullet in the chest is probably merciful compared to that as far as some people are concerned. And four of them were headed for the veil, so they were dead anyway."

"Also true. Not quite the way Neville looks at it, but..." He shrugged. "Oh, well. With any luck that's the end of it."

"I suspect it is, yes," she smiled. "Now make sure you eat your peas."

"Yes, dear," he grinned, causing her to laugh.

When he went to bed that night, he was still smiling. 

* * *

_Two weeks earlier…_

Entering the room through her normal route, she silently closed the window, turned around, and yipped in shock.

"You've had your fun. I think you should probably stop now," said the other person.

She sagged a little. What had given her away?

"Don't look like that," her unexpected visitor chuckled. "You had to know I'd work it out sooner or later. Your technique is… unique." The other person shrugged. "A bit more bloodthirsty than I'd prefer, but I can't deny it was efficiently done. I know someone who would agree although he'd find the method somewhat uncomfortable. It's certainly had a lasting effect. The authorities don't like it, but most of those people were ones they'd dropped the ball on time and time again, so something needed to be done one way or the other. You beat me to it."

Looking at the visitor, she brightened up a little. Perhaps she had made a difference after all. And she'd certainly saved a lot of lives, nearly as many as she'd somewhat reluctantly been forced to end. That was directly, of course, there was no knowing how many more those people would have gone on to kill, although past performance suggested the total was quite high.

"But Harry would be upset, so it's best if it stops. I won't take the guns away, but I want you to put them back and only use them if you really have to. All right?"

She nodded, a little sadly, but with understanding. Perhaps her friend was right. Certainly the hunting had become much harder recently, so the criminals had at least finally learned. All in all, it was a decent result. And she did have other hobbies to keep her going, after all…

"Thank you." Her visitor smiled, her tail twitching around in a manner that showed she was pleased. "Sleep well. I'll see you soon enough."

Lifting a hand, the other person nodded to her, then blinked out of existence as soundlessly as she'd arrived.

With an inner sigh, she took her mask off, carefully cleaned her weapons, put everything back into the secret storage area, then looked out the window at the night sky. It was becoming colder as winter drew in and on the whole she was glad she wouldn't need to wander around the city looking for idiots.

After a quick midnight meal, Hedwig settled down on her perch and closed her eyes.


End file.
